Dear Diary
by SimplySupreme
Summary: All lies have a way of eventually turning against you. After years of lying to others and especially herself, Kim is learning this lesson the hard way. That is, until a mysterious diary she finds in a parking lot becomes the key to saving both herself AND the world. A world full of old enemies, new friends, moral crises, superpowers, and life at its most powerful. Post Grad. Kigo.
1. Chapter 1: On the Run

_A/N: So me and my friend Nick had a throwback weekend where we binged-watched Kim Possible, because it was our favorite show as kids. Then, my Muse literally attacked me with this story in my sleep and is currently holding me at gunpoint to finish it. (She's an uppity thing, if you hadn't noticed by now.) It's a darker, more adult look at the series that I loved so much when I was younger, featuring my all-time favorite baddie, Shego. Post-Graduation, of course. And eventual Kigo, in later chapters. Now, read!_

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><p>Dear Diary: Chapter One<br>On the Run

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><p>Kim hadn't lived for all that long, but she'd done and seen things that most other girls her age hadn't, so she supposed that this gave her an unusually astute perspective on life in general. Or, at least, she hoped this was the case. It was about the only payment she'd ever gotten for what she did, if it was.<p>

Kim Possible saved the world. In its simplest form, that was her job description. What and who she saved it from, and why? Well, _that_ answer was a little more complicated.

So far as Kim was concerned, life was an amalgamation of nearly infinite experiences that always managed to somehow add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. That's what made life worth living, after all. If life was just a sequence of events, it wouldn't be the mysterious and indescribable thing that it tended to be. Kim thought a lot about life. How could she not, when she was almost constantly on the verge of losing it? So she thought that her opinion on the subject was pretty damn important, thank-you-very-much. And her life? It was exciting, which she liked, but it wasn't the life that she wanted to live. Certainly it was the one she chose to, but if Kim thought that there was a viable and _normal_ alternative… well, she'd probably jump on the opportunity in an instant.

If only the 'supervillains' she defeated like clockwork could hear that! They'd explode out of sheer incredulity. Because to the world, Kim Possible had the perfect life. Rich and loving parents, glamorous day job, perfect grades, a boyfriend from a storybook romance novel, the position of captain on the cheer squad: what else could she possibly want? And Kim would have been inclined to agree with them, if it weren't for the fact that none of these things were _Kim_.

Well, _some_ of them were, she amended. Her parents _were_ rich, so she lived a cushy lifestyle at least. (Rocket scientist and brain surgeon, people! It pays well.) Her grades were impeccable, and this because she worked for them, so Kim would concede to that. She held her position on the cheer squad by her own merits too, not that she actually enjoyed it. (Sure, it was great practice for her athletic lifestyle, but the false, annoying cheerfulness and behind-the-scenes bitchiness really grated on her nerves.) Not only that, but her boyfriend wasn't someone she was actually dating, her missions to tangle with villains were dangerous and frightening (and _really_ something that Global Justice should have been handling) and her parents didn't really love her.

Or at least that was Kim's theory. The only other person who knew the 'real' Kim was Ron, and he was neck-deep in his own issues. She was glad she had him though. Even though they were both drowning, being able to cling to each other as the water rushed in dulled the panic.

It all started when Kim was very young. Pretty much with her birth, really, seeing as she had been born _wrong._ She'd been a perfectly healthy baby physically, mind you, but she was a disappointment almost from the beginning. Both of her parents were at the upper echelons of their respective fields, and were literally geniuses, intelligence-wise. And Kim was… not. Truly, she was extremely intelligent, but she was still _normal._ Not like her younger twin brothers, who took after their brilliant parents.

And Kim's parents made sure she knew it from the moment it had become evident that she wasn't going to pump out a new theory of relativity at the age of five. Not directly, of course, but that aura of condescension was always there: that silent but ever-present message that Kim just _wasn't good enough_. Her parents were so damn proud of the damn tweebs, and their lack of pride in their daughter told her exactly what they thought she was. A mistake.

No, Kim was never going to have an IQ of 180, so she decided to compensate in other ways. She couldn't design and launch a rocket into low orbit using only kitchen appliances, duct tape, and chewing gum, but Kim had decided from the moment she'd been able to truly understand why her parents didn't love her that she would be the model daughter. She'd be the perfect specimen of an all-American kid, and there'd be no _way_ her parents could keep looking at her like she was a defective prototype. It hadn't worked at first. Not until her first job 'saving the world', that is. Once Kim had graduated from being a babysitter to being a hero, she was suddenly worth the attention that she'd always longed for.

And Kim had loved it. She'd basked in the sensation like a housecat in a patch of sun. Finally, _finally_ her parents loved her! It didn't matter that she didn't really like cheerleading. It didn't matter that she had to sneak out of the house a few nights a week to find someone to teach her more martial arts so she wouldn't be so helplessly outmatched. It didn't matter that she constantly ran headlong into life-threatening situations at the age of fourteen without any adult supervision whatsoever, if you didn't count the goons that were trying to kill her as supervision. It didn't matter that she was bisexual and couldn't come out of the closet because her Dad said dykes were disgusting. None of it mattered, because Kim finally had what she wanted. She'd made her parents proud! She'd even been able to help her loyal friends Ron and Wade in the process. Ron, whose parents had refused to have him tested for ADD despite glaring symptoms and simply written him off as stupid, and therefore only ever expected him to fail (which sort of became a self-fulfilling prophesy, most days). Ron, who had stood loyally at her side no matter what, and Wade, who she'd met when she stopped a group of older kids whaling on the chubby black boy and calling him a nerd. Wade, whose single mother regularly dosed herself into a stupor, leaving her ten-year-old genius child to pick up the slack and take care of the both of them physically and financially all whilst fighting severe social impairment on his own.

Yes, Team Possible's missions to save the world helped all three of them. It made Kim a hero, and worthy of her parents' love. It proved to everyone that Ron was more than a failure. It gave Wade a chance to socialize with friends, even if it was through the screen of the Kimmunicator. Everybody's happy!

The illusion lasted all of two months before it was shattered by an innocent question from the helicopter pilot who happened to be giving them a ride home that day.

"Hey kid, are your parents okay with this villain-fighting of yours? You look pretty beat up, and if it was my kid, I'd be pretty frantic," he commented lightly.

Kim's happiness crashed down around her ears with the sound of shattered glass. She'd never answered the man, and was silent all the way home as Ron kept glancing over at her nervously. He was nervous for a good reason, really. Kim was absolutely _seething_. For the first time in her life, she mentally shifted the blame from her shoulders to the shoulders of her parents.

It was a long-overdue perspective.

How _dare_ they? How _dare_ they allow their child to do what she did? They _encouraged_ her, _knowing_ that she was poking a sleeping bear in tangling with people who blatantly stated their intentions to kill her. It didn't matter that she was athletically skilled enough to cheat death again and again. Normal parents would have fainted at the mere thought of Kim Possible being their child.

So why didn't hers? Why didn't they care? She wanted to grab them by the shoulders, shake them, and scream, 'Parents are supposed to love their children unconditionally!' So what if she wasn't a certifiable genius, and merely highly intelligent? So what? They were her _parents_. They were supposed to love her.

But by the time they'd arrived back in Middleton, Kim had cooled down considerably, falling into a state of resignation rather than rage. Neither she nor Ron mentioned that ride ever again, because he knew and she knew he knew the truth.

Kim would _never_ be good enough.

She never stopped doing the missions though, and never stopped pretending that everything wasn't as perfect as it looked. To this day, Kim wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was a moral obligation to do good, though Kim rather doubted that. More likely, a large part of her continuing the missions was probably the fact that it was a chance to use Kim's one true passion: martial arts. But a part of her, even if it was a little part, kept on going for a more disturbing reason. It was the part of her that looked all the atomizers and death rays and plasma bolts and clubs and cliffs and varying weapons right in the face, unflinching and fearless. It was the part of her that knew just how _close_ death was, and just… _didn't care._ It was the part of Kim that wanted to die; that looked at her mother's lack of reaction as she wrapped her injuries after a mission and wondered if she had any right at all to be alive if she was clearly such a glaring, unwanted mistake.

Kim tried not to think about it too much. She supposed that she sort of hoped that if she didn't acknowledge it, it would go away. It never did, of course, but there you have it. Psychoanalyzing yourself was never really accurate anyways.

And now, since she'd graduated high school, Kim was being forced out of the comfort zone she'd built for herself out of heroism and denial. Her whole life was a lie. Even her 'dating' Ron, which really only lasted a week. They'd just decided not to advertise their breakup in an effort to not draw attention to themselves. Kim was under enough stress as it was, and Ron, who had decided to go back to Yamanouchi for an indefinite period of time for his own escape come summer's end, agreed with her. With each of her parents pressuring her to enter their respective fields, Kim was having major angst over choosing a college to attend, and the deadline for such decisions was barely a week away, and that was the _late_ deadline.

The thing was… Kim didn't want to go to college. Not if it meant that one of her parents would hate her more than they already did. Besides, she didn't like either neuroscience _or_ aerospace engineering. She liked martial arts; and much to her parents' derision, pencil sketching, which she'd only ever continued in secret after being told that such a skill was plebeian and, with the advent of computer imaging, essentially useless.

And she wasn't about to join Global Justice like Dr. Director wanted her to. No _way_ was she going to entangle herself in that bureaucratic clusterfuck. Kim was Kim. Even if Kim wasn't good enough, she wasn't about to lose what little of herself was left after the self-purge she'd done to become 'Kim Possible, World's Savior'!

In short, Kim didn't know what to do. All she wanted to do was _live, _but she wasn't quite sure how to make that happen.

And that brought her to the subject of the person she was tracking down at the moment. Shego. Yes, Kim knew a lot about life, but she was willing to bet that her pardoned nemesis knew more. When Kim thought about life, the ex-hero (and now ex-villain) was the first thing that popped into her head, simply on the basis that the two were nearly synonymous.

Kim didn't know anyone else who was more alive than Shego. It was in the way she moved and in the way she spoke, and in the way her eyes burned with an emerald fire to rival that which she held in her hands when they fought. She said what she wanted to say, did what she wanted to do, and didn't take any attitude from _anyone_.

It would shock the world to know just how desperately Kim admired that about her. In fact, it would shock the world to know that Kim admired a lot more than that about Shego. The woman was a brilliant fighter, for one, and Kim looked forward to their tussles more than anything in the world. (She suspected that Shego did too. The woman was always full of witty quips and devilish smirks when they fought, and Kim had never walked away from a fight with Shego with more than minor burns, despite the fact that she'd witnessed the woman's green plasma melt through metal with ease.) Shego was also clever. More so than any of the other baddies anyways. Kim still wasn't sure why the hired thief hadn't snapped and just taken over the world herself, if only to spare herself the headache of listening to the various megalomaniacal rants she was routinely subjected to as evil hired help.

In a way, when Kim looked at Shego, she saw a dark and ever-so-tantalizing version of herself. Or at least, someone she wished she could be.

Which honestly kind of freaked her out.

Still, she was beyond excited at the moment. After she'd been pardoned for her role in thwarting the Lorwardian invasion, Shego had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. No crimes, and no public sightings. Not even a speeding ticket. Kim felt that she should be proud of her for this, but in reality, she was a little disappointed. She actually _missed_ fighting Shego. No one else could come close to matching the thief's skill, and she was the only person who really challenged Kim at this point. Without Shego pushing her to get better, Kim felt… flat. Needless to say, when she'd gotten the call from Wade that Shego had been sighted, Kim was thrilled at the possibility of a spar, even though she wasn't technically supposed to be rooting for the pardoned villains to return to their dastardly ways.

It was odd though. Like all villains, Shego had a style, and with Shego, it was go hard or go home. Kim would have thought her more likely to break into Fort Knox rather than a shabby apartment building in a run-down neighborhood in Chicago. There was nothing there to steal! Wade would have never known it was Shego, really, except for the fact that she'd just happened to pass by a security camera on her way in, and Wade's facial recognition software in conjunction with a police report that she'd been sighted in the area that morning had alerted him to her presence.

It was definitely weird. But beggars can't be choosers, and a tussle with her favorite villain was just the thing Kim needed to push her troubles away from her mind. It'd been too long since they'd fought each other, and Kim desperately desired the release.

Kim knew something was seriously wrong as soon as she neared the apartment though. When Shego moved, she was silent. Like a cat. Kim would know, considering how many times the other woman had been able to sneak up on her, and while Kim could clearly see through the partially open door of the apartment that the person inside was Shego, something was definitely off. Besides the issue that Kim could hear the scuff of her uncharacteristically heavy footsteps and angry muttering, Shego was actually wearing _white_.

As in, something that actually wasn't black or green!

Kim nearly fainted then and there, but pulled herself together and stepped into the doorway, clearing her throat. Shego was so startled that she jumped and spilled a cardboard box of assorted personal items across the floor. Something that Kim had never seen her do.

This was so the drama.

"Princess," Shego breathed, tensing as if she wasn't certain whether or not to expect an attack. She wore her long shiny hair pulled back into a flattering ponytail, giving Kim a clear view of her sharp green eyes fixed upon her with distinct wariness. It was strange seeing her in a white button-down blouse and jeans, wearing flats of all things, but it wasn't a bad look. Just different. "What are you doing here?"

Kim raised an eyebrow. "I could ask you the same thing, Shego," she replied quite equitably. She frowned. "You look like you haven't slept in two days," she pointed out. "What happened to you?"

And really, it was true. Shego's features, while normally smooth and as perfectly proportioned as a Hellenistic statue, were currently pinched with tiredness, and her eyes underlined with dark shadows. Her unusual outfit was distinctly rumpled, and Kim didn't miss the lack of strength in the stance of her body. Kim almost felt bad for catching up to the thief.

Key word being almost.

"Look Kimmie, I don't have time for this," Shego snapped with her customary belligerence. "I've kept my nose clean, if that's what's got your panties in a twist."

Kim frowned. It appeared that Shego didn't want to play. "What are you doing here?" she asked again as she watched the other woman bend down and gather what she'd dropped back into the box, unable to restrain herself from admiring the curve of her ass as she did so. She missed the old cat suit, but Kim decided that the jeans weren't half-bad either.

She could almost feel Shego roll her eyes in response to her question. "I live here," she shot back, before adding somewhat bitterly, "or at least I _did_."

For the first time since arriving, Kim tore her eyes away from Shego and took in her surroundings. The inside of the apartment wasn't as dingy as the outside building. The walls were painted tastefully in mint green with an accent wall in warm beige, and the front room that Kim could see was occupied by a dark leather couch that looked surprisingly comfortable. Gauzy white curtains billowed gently over the windows, and the space smelled of citrus and cherry wood. Other than that, however, the room was depressingly bare of all personality. The reason for this, Kim saw, was because any and all personal items had been packed into six cardboard boxes, five stacked on the floor and the sixth being the one that Shego had been carrying when she had entered.

Bewildered, Kim blinked twice. "Why did I get a call that someone was breaking in?" she asked, leaning up against the doorframe slightly. "And where are you going?" At Shego's dirty look, Kim raised her other eyebrow. "Hey, you've gotta admit, this is a bit sketchy," she defended. "It's the middle of the night, and you don't even have the lights on!"

Shego gave a very put-upon sigh. "The local cops are gonna be here in T-minus five minutes, Pumpkin," she said. "Forgive me for not wanting to alert the neighbors that I'm moving out."

"But you were pardoned!" Kim blurted. If Shego had 'kept her nose clean', as she'd said, then there shouldn't have been an issue.

"Doy! Only on the federal and international level. Local warrants are still quite alive and well until they've reached the statute of limitation," Shego retorted with her trademarked sneer. "You really are just another pretty face if you believe Global Justice would give up on me that easily."

_And she's back!_ Kim silently cheered at the acidic tone.

But then her brain caught up with Shego's words. Sure, Kim wasn't the biggest fan of Global Justice even if they _had_ proved useful from time to time, but did she truly believe that they would do something so underhanded to Shego?

As she took in Shego's tired features, Kim realized that yes, she did. And disgust welled up in her. How did anyone expect things to get better if all people did was stab each other in the back? Shego had saved the world. She had deserved a truly fresh start, not a backhanded farce. Frankly, Shego deserved a tropical island vacation, but Kim wasn't the one calling the shots. And now? Now Shego was running from the local police, obviously bone-weary. Her condition made Kim righteously angry. _She_ was the only one allowed to make Shego miserable, because everyone else was beneath her. She respected the woman as a fighter immensely. She deserved to fight against a worthy opponent, not to be forced to run from a pack of slavering hounds like a frightened fox.

Wordlessly, Kim straightened and prowled across the floor, body as taught as a bowstring, and hefted two of the boxes into her arms.

"What are you doing?" Shego demanded sharply, her hands curling into fists.

Kim nearly snorted, but let the thief's angry tone roll off her like water over the back of a duck. "Where's your car, Shego?"

For a long moment, Shego just stared at her, eyes scanning Kim's face for something nameless. Apparently she found whatever it was she was looking for because the woman nodded slowly and picked up a box for herself. "Follow me, Princess," was all she said before turning and heading out the door.

And Kim obeyed. It took two trips for them to get all six boxes brought down to the building's parking lot, and she helped to load them into the back of Shego's black convertible in silence, still stewing in her own anger. Shego was _her_ nemesis. She was the only one allowed to ruin her life!

Kim was broken out of her bizarrely possessive thoughts, however, by the distant wail of approaching sirens. Alarmed, Shego jerked, shifting the last box in her arms. Incidentally, it was the one she'd already dropped, and she hadn't yet taped it back shut. Something small and heavy dropped out of it with a small _thump_, but neither woman paid it any mind as Shego made a dash for the driver's seat and Kim quickly dug around in the bag she'd brought with her, producing a handful of granola bars and a Gatorade, which she tossed to Shego.

"For what it's worth, Shego…" Kim said softly, "good luck. I'll do what I can for you."

Shego smiled wryly. "Thanks Princess," she said as she dropped her loot into the passenger seat, appearing nearly as confused as Kim felt.

Forcing herself into a more familiar pattern, Kim suddenly gave her a cheeky grin and winked. "I'll see you around, Shego. Give 'em hell for me."

The woman's eyes widened fractionally before she threw her head back and laughed. "Kimmie, swearing? The world _must_ be ending," she hooted. Kim's grin was returned in full, and she was glad to see more fire in her ex-nemesis's eyes. "Your wish is my command, Princess."

Still smiling, Kim stepped to one side and watched serenely as Shego pulled out of her parking space and sped off into the night, feeling somewhat numb as the red taillights exited her field of vision. This whole encounter had felt… strange. Unreal almost, as if the evidence that Shego was a _person_ just didn't compute. Especially since she'd just seemed so… young. For the first time ever, Kim realized that Shego couldn't be more than five or so years older than her.

With a sigh, Kim pulled out her Kimmunicator and requested a ride back to Middleton before moving to exit the parking lot before the cops managed to get there. She kicked something solid as she did so, however, and she jumped as a small rectangular object skittered across the concrete. Belatedly, Kim remembered the sound of one of Shego's possessions falling from the box when they'd been in such a hurry. Without thought, Kim pocketed what a cursory examination told her was a book before running off into the night. By the time she made her way back to Middleton via a trucker she'd pulled from a wreck a year or so ago, it was so late that she collapsed into bed the moment she got home, and she didn't get the chance to examine her find until the next morning.

And it was certainly confusing once she did. Kim hadn't the faintest idea what Shego was doing with that appeared to be a locked diary belonging to one '_Michelle Mae Govetsky_'. Kim being Kim though, and in need of a distraction to boot, she supposed that she ought to find out.

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><p><em>AN: Three guesses who Michelle is. I promise that this gets less cliché later on. Please review!_


	2. Chapter 2: Shelly

_A/N: Since this chapter is short, I'm putting it up early. After this, updates should be weekly. Ish. (Seriously, don't quote me on that.) Thank you to everyone who put the story on alert or reviewed!_

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><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Two<br>Shelly

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><p>Now, as cynical as Kim generally was (inside the safety of her own head, of course) she <em>did<em> have a firm set of morals. And these included the compulsion to respect others' privacy, and _not_ read clearly personal journals. However, the diary of Michelle Mae Govetsky was like a siren, luring her to smash against the rocks with its song. Just who was this Michelle? And why did Shego have her book?

Kim nearly snorted aloud at that. This was _Shego_, burglar extraordinaire! Kim gave it 70/30 odds that she was a diagnosable kleptomaniac.

Conflicted, Kim allowed a small, morose sigh to escape from between her lips and leaned her head back against the frame of her bed. It was a depressing, rainy Saturday morning, and Kim rather doubted that anyone in the house would be doing much more than walking back and forth from the kitchen to the couch today. Kim wasn't even positive she'd be able to bring herself to leave her room. It was nice here. Quiet, except for the rattling of the rain against her windowpanes. And the siren's call of the diary that Shego had left behind, of course.

Shego. Idly, Kim wondered where the green spitfire (literally) had gone. It also occurred to her to wonder why she was running instead of fighting. Thinking back to the woman's exhausted countenance, Kim admitted that perhaps Shego was simply tired of fighting at the moment, even if it didn't seem quite in character for her. Lord knows that Kim herself had taken a month-long sabbatical after defeating Warhok and Warmonga.

But then, that wasn't right, was it? Kim knew from past experience that Shego had some serious hideouts tucked away that she could (and probably had, at some earlier point) squirrel herself away in. If that was the case, why had she left the safety of an established base to visit a ratty apartment in Chicago that she claimed was her home? It wasn't particularly criminal behavior. In fact… it almost seemed like Shego had tried to live normally, and ultimately failed after the local police took it upon themselves to hunt her down.

Curious.

But that still didn't explain just who Michelle Mae Govetsky was.

Her willpower crumbling in the face of her insatiable curiosity, Kim nabbed a bobby pin from her bedside table and made short work of the lock on the journal, careful not the scratch the shiny silver clasp as she did so while cooing appreciatively at the soft texture of the purple leather it was bound in. It was clearly an expensive diary, especially considering the personalization of Michelle's name embossed in silver lettering on the cover. Eager to know more, Kim gently flipped to the first entry, and was surprised when she was greeted by the handwriting of a child. It was done in pen, but the letters were blocky and uneven, and spelling errors dotted the page. Grinning slightly, Kim began to read.

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><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_My name is Michelle Mae Govetsky, and todday I am 8. Noone calls me Michelle becas Mommy is Michelle to. I like to be called Michi but Mommy says ladys arnt called that so I am Shelly-Mae. Merrin says that I shood put the date. Its December 2 1992. Merrin is my big brother and hes 9. Henry is my otherr big brother and hes 12. I have 2 little brothers to. Wesley and Wendell are twins and there 5. All my brothers bot me this diary for my birthday to put importint things in. They love me a lot becas they had no lunch for 2 weeks and Henry mowed lons for Mrs. Jones. Thats wy I will save the paper and only rite on my birthday or on importint days. Merrin says to say what I think here so he cant heer me but hes a boy so what dose he know?_

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

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><p>Having finished this first entry, Kim was smiling widely at the cuteness factor, but also a faintly concerned. No lunch for two weeks? Why hadn't the mother, Michelle, helped her sons buy a gift for Shelly-Mae, their sister? For that matter, why was she Shelly-Mae instead of Michi, as she so obviously preferred? Troubled, Kim gently turned the page and looked to the next entry. The handwriting and spelling had improved slightly, but the pen strokes were more aggressive here, and indented so deeply into the paper that the pen had torn through in some places as the girl wrote.<p>

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><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today is May 5, 1993. Im not 9 yet, but theres no one else to tok to. Today, Mr. Brandon the principl of the school took me to his offise again for fighting and he called Mommy. I told him not to but he sed that becase he alreddy sawed me 2 times he had to. Mommy was so mad wen I got home. After I was punnished Henry went to my room and sed Mommy shoodnt hit me but I sed its ok becas I alreddy hurt from fighting. Henry sed Im stupid for fighting but he dosnt get it. Freddy Green keeps taking my homework and rips it so I got to make him stop. Lily Finnigan and her frends are mean two. They call me Smelly Shelly. They sed that Daddy went away becas Merrin and me were ugly and smelly and Mommy is a no good drunk. Diary wut is a drunk? They sed me and Henry and Merrin and Wes and Wen ar street trash and shood go away. I wish I cood go away but Im a kid and kids have to go to school so I fighted them to. Today a big kid from Henrys class told me that I hav no frends becas Im poor and dirty and I hit him until he cryd but then he tattled and told Mr. Brandon. No one wants to be my frend but Im not mean like the others. I wish I understood. I rited today becas I am sad and Henry sed telling wy you are sad makes it better. I think hes rite. Thank you diary. 1 day wen Im big no one will ever be mean to me evar again._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

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><p>Heart in her mouth, Kim slowly lowered the little book in her hands, blinking rapidly. Children could be so cruel. Worse yet, so could adults. Kim couldn't help but let her heart ache in tandem with little Shelly's. The part of her that was a hurt little girl wailed out in recognition of the fact that Kim wasn't the only one who wasn't good enough for their parents. Kim had never suffered physical abuse though. Not from a family member, at least, and she knew in her heart that if her life had been like Shelly-Mae's, she wouldn't have been strong enough to handle it.<p>

In all honesty, she wasn't even sure she could keep reading about it. She still didn't know who Michelle Mae Govetsky was, but what little she did know wasn't painting a very happy picture.

Still, Kim had already come this far, and she'd never read anything before in her life that spoke to her soul like this did. In some strange way, Kim felt like she owed it to herself, and to Shelly, to keep going. She wasn't usually one for prayer, but in this instance, she pleaded with any divine being that was listening that Shelly made it out okay before reopening the little purple journal and thumbing to entry number three. A deep breath, and then the plunge.

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><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today I am 9. It is December 2, 1993. Nothing much hapened today but last week soshal servises came to the house. I know what that is becase I read it. They take kids away and put them in new houses with peeple you dont know and me and Henry dont want him and me and Merrin and Wes and Wen to be separated. I wood miss my brothers. I love them even if sumtimes I dont want to live with Mommy. Me and Henry saved a lot of lunch monny and bot clean close to wear and cleaned the house and hid Mommys drink. I no what drunk is now and I dont like wen Mommy dose it becase she says mean things like Lily Finnegan. Becase the house was clean and we were clean the soshal servises man left and me and Henry and Merrin and Wes and Wen get to stay a familee. Henry says familee sticks together. I sed I didnt want to stick to them becase they have boy cooties but Merrin sed brothers dont have cooties so its ok. I think he lied._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

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><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today I am ten. It's December 2, 1994. I got a lot better at spelling this year and my teacher said my letters are pretty, so I can right better now. I still got into fights this year, but Mr. Brandon tries reelly hard not to call Mommy. Too months ago Mommy got a boyfrend. His name is Scott. My brothers reelly like him because Scott always keeps food in the kitchen that we can eat but he scares me. Wesley and Wendell say I'm not afraid of anything but that's a lie because I'm afraid a lot and Scott scares me. When Mommy goes to sleep after drinking he always wants to talk to me about school and his work as a guard at the mall and says I'm pretty just like Mommy. I don't have any frends but I don't want to be Scotts frend._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

* * *

><p>Eyes wide, Kim swallowed convulsively and made a valiant attempt at pulling herself together. Shelly-Mae's home life made Kim very, very glad that while her parents didn't love her like she wanted them to, they at least cared enough to take good care of her and <em>pretend<em> that she wasn't a disappointment. She wanted to snatch this little girl away from her living nightmare and simply ensconce her in happiness and love, but Kim was well aware that she was too late for that. If Shelly-Mae was ten years old in 1994, she'd be in her twenties by now.

That thought gave Kim pause. Henry. Merrin. Shelly. Wesley. Wendell. Govetsky.

Her eyes went impossibly wide, and she nearly choked on her own spit. Shelly Govetsky. _She_lly _Go_vetsky. Shego.

No. It couldn't be. Could it? Kim's very essence wanted to reject the idea, but to be fair, she _had_ found the diary with Shego's stuff. And the name thing, especially with Shelly's brothers added in? Hego. Mego. Wego. There was no way that it was a coincidence. Shelly-Mae, the poor little abused girl, was _Shego_. Kim could barely fathom such a thing could be true, but it _was._

The only real question now was whether or not Kim should keep reading.

Oh, she knew she shouldn't. It was one thing to peruse a diary in hopes of finding the owner. It was another matter entirely to keep reading once your realized that you'd be violating the privacy of someone you greatly respected. Lord knew that Kim herself would throw a fit of epic proportions if someone read _her_ diary without her knowledge or consent. (Not that she kept one, but she did have a sketch book that was rather personal to her hidden beneath her mattress. The idea was the same.)

And yet… Shego had always been so mysterious, and so sinfully intriguing at the same time. When Kim was fighting Shego, she was for a few brief moments truly happy, which was a rare event for her. On those few occasions upon which they had fought together as a team… Kim had felt completely invincible. Shego had been an important constant in her life for four years now, but having read the few horrifyingly depressing entries of a child-Shego's diary, Kim truly understood just how little she knew of her once arch-foe, and how that dearth of information went both ways.

No. She definitely should under no circumstances continue reading.

But damn it, Kim knew she was going to do it anyways, and she truly felt despicable for it. It was just… she felt so _connected_ to little Shelly. Surely just a little more wouldn't hurt?

Who was she kidding? Yes it would. If Shego ever found out, Kim most likely wouldn't survive the experience.

But then again, better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?

Mind made up, Kim returned her attention to Shego's journal.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_It's not my birthday yet but I'm scared and I don't know what to do. It's January 26, 1995. Tonite Scott made me talk with him drunk like he dose when Mommy gos to sleep but he scared me. He made me sit on his lap and then he touched me on my butt and I didn't like it. I told him to stop but he said to shut up and be qwiet or he would take away the food for my brothers and then they would hate me becase I was a bad girl so I shut up. Then he made me touch him down there and I cryed and he slapped me and sent me to me and Merrins room. I thought it was bad to touch people down there. I didn't like it but Henry and Merrin and Wes and Wen like Scott and if I'm bad and make him go away then we will have no money for food becase Mommy drinked at her work and then stopt going. I want to fight Scott like Freddy Green but he's to big and he hits reelly hard. Diary what do I do?_

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

* * *

><p>"Oh no," Kim whispered, crying softly. Without further thought, she turned over to the next entry, now too involved to even contemplate stopping. <em>Oh, Shelly. Please be okay.<em>

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_I'm still not eleven, but I lerned somthing really good. Today is February 10, 1995. After Scott touched me I went to the library and now I know he was rong to do that. I was scared and walking and then I saw peeple dancing in a window but then they were fighting but really pretty. The sine on the door said TAICHI and I lerned latter that TAICHI is how to fight. I hid in the alley and I did what I saw the peeple in the window do and I went back evry day for a week even tho Scott hasn't touched me agen. One day a girl came into the alley and saw me. Her name is Emma and she's 12 and she helps me sometimes. She has orange hair like the flowers by Mr. Felix's house and is a good teacher for TAICHI fighting. I like TAICHI. I'm not good at multiplying but TAICHI is fun and Emma says I'm going to be as good as her dad one day and he teaches inside the dojo._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

* * *

><p>Shelly-Mae's handwriting, which had been steadily improving with each entry, suddenly regressed and developed an awkward stilt, causing Kim to wrinkle her nose.<p>

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today I am eleven. It is December 2, 1995. Last night Scott tried to touch me for the first time since January but thanks to the alley beside the dojo I was ready. I don't care if Henry, Merrin, Wesley, and Wendell hate me for what I did. I hit Scott. He broke my nose and my arm which is why I'm writing with the wrong hand today but I dislokated his elbow and fracturred his shin. We woke everyone but Mommy up and my brothers were shouting and I was shouting and Scott was shouting and Miss Lacy from next door called the police and they took Scott away and promised he won't come back. When Mommy woke up she was really mad and belted me but I don't care becase Scott isnt coming back. The policeman said he had a war-sumthing which means he goes to jail. I told him Scott desservs it and he said he thought so too. Wendell and Wesley and Merrin keep asking why I hit Scott like that but they don't get it. Henry isn't mad at me but he won't talk about Scott. I don't need Tai Chi anymore, but I love it so I will keep going back after school like always and maybe Emma will be my friend even if she is older than me._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

* * *

><p>Unable to help herself, Kim tossed the journal onto her bedspread, sprang to her feet, and let out a delighted whoop. She'd done it! Little Shelly had stood up for herself and gotten rid of that creep! Kim was absolutely giddy with relief. Perhaps her reaction was inappropriately strong, but Kim didn't give a rat's ass. Shelly-Mae was her hero after kicking Scott's ass. Or at the very least holding her own against him.<p>

"Kim? What's going on up there?" her mother called from down the stairs.

"There's not some _boy_ in there, is there?" her father chimed in somewhat predictably.

Happy bubble effectively burst, Kim rolled her eyes. "I'm fine guys," she shouted back, opening her door a crack for better communication. "Exciting book."

Having received a few noises of acknowledgement, Kim retreated back into her sanctuary and leaned up against the closed door. She eyed the innocent-looking diary that lay face-up on her rumpled sheets.

She shouldn't be doing this. She shouldn't be reading Shego's personal thoughts. Kim knew for a fact that the woman would be utterly _mortified_ to know that she had violated her in this way. She was well acquainted with the green woman's rather… volatile views of all things concerning mind manipulation and control and privacy. But…

A frustrated growl tore itself from Kim's throat as she gave in to her apparently suicidal streak of curiosity, sprawling belly-down on the bed, uncaring that her too-big sweat pants twisted around her legs rather uncomfortably. She had a book to read.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Sooo... yeah. Before you ask, yes, we'll get to see Shego's life all the way up until Kim got ahold of that diary. As a fun fact, baby Shego's character is actually based on a little girl I met once when I went to pick up my mom from her volunteer job at Childhelp. She was ridiculously adorable, but had a very similar home life to Shelly-Mae, except that her older brother eventually called CPS on the mother and her boyfriend. It was completely heartbreaking to hear her talk about her life because she just didn't understand that how she was treated was wrong. She'd just casually mention little things that made me double-take really badly, as if they were totally normal to get beaten up at school for being dirty, or being 'punished'. I never saw her again, but her story touched me so much that I used her as inspiration for Shelly-Mae's character. So for my public service announcement of the day, I have to say: please, people. If a kid living near you needs help, don't just assume that someone else will call CPS. YOU do it. Make a difference._


	3. Chapter 3: Five to Glow

_**A/N:** Hi guys! I'm two days early, but I kind of had a rough day today and after hitting the library for six straight hours (not even kidding, people) I walked home and kind of just wrote my brains out. I'm on like, chapter thirteen right now. So I figured that maybe one of you was having a rough day too and that, being a good Samaritan, I am obligated to share my zen and post a chapter._

_Thanks to _zax850, zzzoo99, Fearhunter, _and _Lhyaran_ for leaving such lovely comments. I'm really glad you enjoyed it, cause you made my day!_

_But now, the story._

* * *

><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Three<br>Five to Glow

* * *

><p><em>"Dear Diary,<em>

_Today, I am twelve. It is December 2, 1996. To date, this has been the best birthday ever. Why? Diary, Emma threw me a birthday party! And she said that that's what friends do for each other. Friends! She snuck me into the dojo's rec room, and she'd made a cake! She said it was strawberry flavored. It wasn't very pretty but to me, it was the prettyest cake that's ever been. I ate two pieces and saved the rest for Wesley and Wendell. Henry and Merrin are allerjik to strawberry. Emma said that for my present I get a whole WEEK of classes in the dojo. Not the alley. The DOJO! Oh Diary, I don't think I've ever been so happy. I don't care what anyone at school thinks and Henry pretends we aren't related whenever I see him with his friends. I, Michelle Mae Govetsky, have my first friend, and no one can take that away from me._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_It's not my birthday yet, but it's close enough. Today is November 28, 1997. It's been a good year. I go to the alley beside the dojo every day after school to go see Emma. I'm in the seventh grade this year, so I get out an hour earlier than I did in primary. I like middle school, because with more people there, less people bother to torment me if I stay quiet. None of the kids from elementary will start anything with my anymore anyways. Not after I broke Freddy Green's nose! He's lucky I didn't break his arm._

_All this year, I've been getting really good at fighting, and not just at tai chi either. I watch a karate place on Saturdays, and a kickboxing gym and jiu ditsu place on Sundays. I want to do Kendo next. And sometimes I'll go out wandering around the neighborhood at night and get into fights with the high school boys who think they're tough just because they're in a gang. I've learned to fight dirty from them. I've gotten pretty hurt a few times, but nothing serious enough that I couldn't take care of it myself. Wes and Wen worry about me, but they've learned to keep quiet about it because of Mother. She can barely stand to look at me without flying off the handle, and the twins are smart enough to know that one set of bruisings is better than two. So long as they keep quiet, I'm home free. Henry's too busy being a football star to worry about any of us anymore, and Merrin is too busy sucking face with everything that walks past him with a pair of tits and a pulse._

_I've also been earning money here and there by fixing up cars and bikes for cheaper than the mechanics do it. I like things with motors almost as much as I like martial arts, which is quite a lot, because fighting makes me feel alive. The money gets me clothes that aren't Henry's hand-me-downs. Actual clothes! And boy do I love to look good, when I can. It's good to be seen as a normal member of society as opposed to a street rat._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

* * *

><p>Finishing the latest entry, Kim tossed her head back and laughed. <em>There <em>was Shego. She hadn't been sure when the familiar dry, caustic wit developed in little Shelly, but it was inordinately pleasing to see the beginnings of it now. Not that Kim could fathom why, having been on the receiving end of Shego's humor more times than she could count. Perhaps she was a closet masochist?

Something to think about later.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_As of four months ago, I am thirteen years old. It is April 2, 1998. I didn't write on my birthday because I've had quite a bit of thinking to do about myself. I mean, the health class drawls on and on about 'expecting changes' and all, but I'm not like everybody else. (Not that I didn't know that already.) It's just that, on my thirteenth birthday, Emma gave me another 'party' with just the two of us. And when I blew out my candle and made my wish I found myself wishing that Emma would kiss me. I had no idea where that thought even came from! So I took a lot of time to do some serious thinking (and fantasizing) and Diary, I… think I'm gay. I like girls. Quite a lot, actually, and I'm scared. There's a lesbian in the year above me at school, and the other kids make her life hell. If ANYONE ever found out about this, I don't know if I could handle it. Universal distain is one thing, but active persecution? No thanks. I thought about telling my brothers, but I don't think I can. Wesley and Wendell wouldn't care, but they're too young to really understand, I think. Merrin rarely spares a thought for anyone that isn't Merrin, so I don't think he'd be an issue, but Henry would be really upset. He tries really, really hard to be what he thinks is the perfect human being. He plays football, has the best hair, uses all the new slang, and wears all the fashionable clothes, not that I know where he gets the money. He tries to be his own hero, like if he could somehow become Mr. Go City, he could eventually save himself._

_Having someone like me as a sister definitely doesn't fit that image, and I can't bring myself to shatter it. Henry's a moron, but he's my brother. The way I see it, Diary, no one needs to know. It's enough that I know and am okay with it, right? As for Emma… well, she doesn't need to know either. I really, really like her, but I don't think she likes girls._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

* * *

><p>Thoughtfully, Kim closed the diary and settled her chin in her hands as she gazed out into what she suddenly realized was the late afternoon sky. It had stopped raining for the moment, but the clouds still hung black and heavy, threatening a repeat performance at any moment. She hadn't had any idea that Shego preferred women, but Kim wasn't in a position to say whether she had followed through on her decision to keep quiet about it or not. After all, as an official enemy, Shego hadn't really been up for sharing those sorts of little tidbits with her. She had dated Mr. Barkin under the influence of the attitudinator, Kim recalled with a shiver of disgust. Though, she really ought not to use Ms. Go as any sort of barometer for Shelly's –no, <em>Shego's<em>—behavior. They were nothing alike. At least, not in the ways that mattered.

Though Kim supposed that was the whole point.

Shelly-Mae's coming to terms with her own sexuality though… that was something that Kim could relate to. She remembered quite vividly the moment she'd discovered that she was attracted to women just as much as she was men. Though slightly traumatic at the time, it was actually a funny story in hindsight.

She'd been fifteen. Ron had dragged her into Smarty-Mart for some inane reason, and Kim had opted to simply let her spastic friend to just do his own thing and had struck off on her own, casually (and secretly longingly) inspecting the store's collection of drawing pencils. She'd been testing the quality of a 5B when she'd caught sight of a girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen years of age at the end of the aisle, appearing genuinely distressed.

Kim being Kim, she had immediately gone to ask her what was wrong. The girl –a stunning brunette with a Hispanic burr to her voice and playful eyes—had looked up, startled, and nearly visibly wilted in relief.

"Please, if you could come help me break up with my boyfriend right now, I would make it worth your while," she had pleaded.

Thrown by the unusual request, Kim had nevertheless agreed. The girl flashed her a dazzling smile, took her hand, and tugged her two aisles over to where a young man was browsing through cereals. Just as Kim was about to open her mouth to ask what the plan was, the brunette had put her own plan into action.

She spun Kim around to face her and planted a searing, toe-curling kiss on her lips.

It was right about then that Kim's brain had completely short-circuited. She vaguely recalled the girl finally pulling away and grinning deviously at her, tucking a ten-dollar bill down the front of Kim's shirt, and sashaying off to confront her completely irate boyfriend. (To this day, Kim wasn't sure if she felt like a paid escort or not, but she supposed that it _had_ given the girl the desired result of a break-up, even if Kim felt a little violated by her methods.) After that… well, Kim had pretty much remained frozen in place, mind buzzing through thoughts at speeds approaching Mach 10 in an attempt to process that: for one, she'd been kissed by a girl and for two, that she'd really, _really_ liked it.

Snickering to herself at the memory, Kim reopened Shelly-Mae's diary and settled in for the next installment. Her eyes widened with alarm as she saw the severe lines and uneven spacing of the letters though. She knew what that sort of handwriting meant. Shelly was upset. Heart in her throat, Kim drew her eyes downward with no small amount of dread.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_I don't even know where to begin. I just… Today is September 18, 1998. On September 1, something… something happened. The twins went exploring in the woods by the suburbs a few days before, and they'd dragged Henry, Merrin and I out to see what they'd found. It was an old treehouse. It was pretty cool actually. We all climbed up, and for once, things were like they used to be, and we were all laughing, and then… it was like the sky was on fire! There was this roaring noise everywhere, and the world just kept getting brighter and I felt so heavy… and then nothing. When I woke up, I was in so much pain. I've never felt anything like it. Not even that time when I had three ribs broken. Just… all over, like I'd swallowed acid and then bathed in it. When I opened my eyes, I was naked in this huge fucking crater and I was ON FIRE. Literally._

_And I wasn't burning. Green fire and I wasn't burning, but it felt like it. I passed out again and the next thing I know I'm in a hospital, having been out for four days._

_Diary, all of us… we're different now. When the ambulance found us, we were glowing, all different colors, and we can… do things, now. Henry glows blue, and is so strong. Like a team of bull elephants, strong. Merrin's skin went purple, and he glows purple too. He shrinks. (He keeps saying it's the coolest power, but no one believes him. Not even Merrin.) The twins glow red, and do this weird mitosis thingy, and make copies of themselves. That's the most useful thing, I think._

_And I… God, I'm a mess. I'm a fatal accident waiting to happen. I burn. So hot. I melted two gurneys and nearly through the floor of the ambulance when they brought us here! I hurt the EMTs, and the nurses, and the doctors… I didn't mean to, but they're afraid of me. My brothers are afraid of me. I'M afraid of me. If I get the least bit upset, I go up in green fire and things explode. It doesn't hurt me so much anymore. It feels like a stubborn scab getting ripped off instead of being boiled alive._

_Did I mention that I'm fucking green? My skin? My eyes? Even my hair is highlighted! When I look in the mirror now, I don't see Shelly-Mae Govetsky. She had blue eyes and pale skin and black hair. I see… someone else, and I'm so, so frightened, Diary._

_A comet hit us. A rainbow comet. The doctors say that we were blasted with some unrecorded form of radiation. But I don't care. I'm a freak now, and everyone looks at me like one too. I –all of us—should have died when that treehouse was hit by that comet. Maybe we did. Maybe Shelly is dead._

_But then, who am _I_?_

_My brothers are so excited to finally be special. Henry's the worst. He talks like the comet was some sort of fucking sign from God that we need to help people. He just won't look at me when he says it. Not that that's a change. Henry never looks at me._

_One of the orderlies is teaching me meditation. He says that if I can gain control of myself, I should be able to gain control of the green fire. It's actually working. Slowly, but working. But Diary, I don't know what to do. Everything is going to be different now. People won't look over me like a nobody now. Now, I'm the fucking she-hulk. All I ever wanted from life was to be someone who could live a normal, loving life, but the comet took that future away from me completely, no matter how unlikely it was in the first place. I'm a freak even among freaks and I just… I _know_ I can't do this._

_Love,_

_Freak"_

* * *

><p>Kim recalled getting this same story from Hego. But he'd told it so differently!<p>

She frowned. Hego. Henry. Kim wasn't too fond of him even based off of her own experiences with the self-proclaimed hero. She recalled Ron once commenting after meeting the man that he could see why Shego had left Team Go, and at the time, Kim had privately agreed. Hego was… self-centered, she supposed. More so than even Mego. He meant well, but he was a moron. According to Shelly-Mae, he was a willfully ignorant moron, which was almost worse, in a way.

Really, Kim had never thought much on what it must have been like for Shego to have the powers that she did. All Kim had really been concerned with was dodging the flaming fists that would still leave angry pink puckers on her skin even if Shego wasn't really trying to hurt her. But Shelly-Mae had a point. Her powers weren't like her brothers', and Kim could see people fearing her destructive, uncontrolled nature even back then. It was sad, really.

And though Kim felt for Shelly-Mae and her insecurities, she honestly had increased respect for Shego after reading them. Shego had always seemed so confident in herself and her abilities. To Kim, reading Shelly-Mae refer to herself as a freak was tantamount to hearing the tweebs call themselves stupid. It just… wasn't right. Shelly was a messed-up kid, Kim would admit, and it wasn't without reason. But what she found most remarkable was that—career choice of villainous sidekick aside—Shego truly seemed remarkably well adjusted, all things considered.

It was impressive. Shelly-Mae didn't think she could find the strength to pull through, but Kim knew better. Shelly-Mae would grow up to be the strongest person that Kim had ever met, and one of the few people that she truly admired.

At that moment, Kim knew that she would never regret doing this—reading someone else's obviously personal record of thoughts and feelings. It was wrong of her, of course, but for the first time, the redhead found herself truly appreciating the fact that _she wasn't alone_. Intellectually, she'd always known that she wasn't the only one who lived a hard life. Her life even seemed like a cakewalk, compared to some. Still, she'd never been able to shake the thought that no one would understand her. Not even Wade or Ron, who each had their own problems. Reading Shego's diary had put things into perspective.

Why was she doing this? Why had she devoted her entire life to her attempts to please those who would never be pleased? And it wasn't just her parents that Kim knew would never be satisfied with her efforts. Dr. Director had tried to hide it from her, but Kim knew (thanks to Wade) that Global Justice constantly shut down court charges filed against her from criminals and civilians alike. Though she hadn't confirmed it, Kim was also very sure that they took measures to collar the media too. Despite the fact that Kim both portrayed and liked to think of herself as a hero, law-abiding citizens actually had a word for what she was.

Vigilante.

Destruction of property. Breaking and entering. Trespassing. Aggravated assault. Unauthorized use of unregistered and sophisticated weapons technology. Illegally crossing international borders without a passport. 'Policing' areas outside of American jurisdiction. Piloting unregistered vehicles without a license. Really, the list went on and on. If it weren't for the fact that Betty Director thought of her as a potential future agent, Kim would have probably been arrested several times over for what she'd done in her efforts to save the world, and been vilified by the media to boot. And quite frankly, Kim wasn't sure for how much longer GJ's protection would last, seeing as how she had no plans to join said organization.

This left Kim at a bit of a loss. Kim couldn't please her parents, and she couldn't please the world. With these doors closed to her, only one was left open.

Why shouldn't she live her life to please _herself_ instead?

This, Kim promised herself, was a subject that she would give serious thought to. She owed it to herself, if nothing else. Anything is possible for a Possible: even saving themselves before the world.

Giddy with the knowledge of her newest personal vow, Kim continued reading.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today, I am fourteen years old. It is December 2, 1998. My brothers and I were released from the hospital just a week after I last wrote and returned to Michelle._

_I won't call her Mother any longer._

_Really, I was surprised that they let us go at all. There were a whole lot of government-types wanting to take samples, run tests, and 'interview' us. I'm still not convinced that we won't all end up quarantined in Area 51 some time in the near future. Fortunately for us, Wes and Wen have a friend whose parents are lawyers, and they took it upon themselves to protect our rights. I don't think I've ever been so grateful towards an adult in my life._

_I try to focus on that feeling when things get bad. Because they're pretty bad. Well… maybe not so much for my brothers. Henry is… ecstatic. He's never been more popular! He's the darling of every teacher, the champion of the football team, the universal crush of over fifty percent of the female population of the school (and a comparable number of the boys!) and has been making a name for himself as an all-around helpful superhuman goody-goody. Merrin's done well for himself too. He's not as popular as Henry, but I'm not so sure he cares. He's my brother, and I love him, but Merrin's always been perfectly content just to hear himself talk. I've been calling him Narcissus for a week and a half and he still hasn't caught on to the fact that I'm insulting him. Wes and Wen… well, they sort of pretend that the comet never happened._

_I don't have that luxury. I have to keep myself in check _always_. I tried ignoring my powers once, and they just built up inside of me and burned like they did when I first got them, and they eventually leaked out of me in some not-so-nice bursts. I have to 'discharge' at least once a week to keep myself stable, in an abandoned warehouse so no one gets hurt. And even when I'm not lighting things on fire when I lose my temper, I have to look in the mirror every day and see what that comet made me. The kids at school never let me forget it, either._

_Green bean, mean-n-green, she-hulk, wicked witch, kelp-face, froggy, limey, slime-ball, Elphaba, and my personal favorite, Gumby-tits… well, I'm pretty sure I've heard them all by now. My peers have made it perfectly clear to me that I'm not invisible anymore. That I'm just a fuck-up, like the runt of a litter of puppies. The defective sibling. An animal that should be put down before it kills someone._

_And the worst part is that I can't risk starting a fight anymore, because if I'm mad enough to start a fight, I'm mad enough to lose control. And if I lose control, someone could die._

_I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a killer._

_I spend a lot of time in the library now, reading up on martial arts and engineering. No one dares start anything in Mrs. Pigmian's library. The crazy old bat would disembowel them! Not to mention the musty old library-smell is a bit of a deterrent to bone-headed teenagers in general. I see it as subjecting myself to the lesser of two evils._

_But, what's worse than any of that; I made a… terrible mistake. I went to see Emma, but she didn't want to see me. Not with how I am now. She begged me to leave, and to not come back until I've gained complete control, because eventually, the people close to me would only get hurt. Diary, I didn't want to lose her. It was stupid, but I just… blurted out my feelings for her right there in our alley. And Emma… she was angry. But worse, she was truly and honestly disgusted._

_I've hated myself for lots of reasons, as you well know, Diary. But I've never hated myself more than in that moment when she told me that she never wanted to see me again, wished she had never met me, and that I wasn't welcome back into the alley, or anywhere near the dojo, ever again._

_I managed to drive off my first and only friend. And that hurts._

_Love,_

_Shelly-Mae"_

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today is June 20, 1999. Things have been… better, I suppose. Henry graduated high school not too long ago, and has been promoted to assistant manager in his job at Bueno Nacho. (Disgusting paragon of processed crap that pretends to be cheese and other various latin-inspired food, but isn't.) With all this in mind, he managed to get custody of Merrin, Wesley, Wendell, and I. Merrin is a shockingly dab legal hand, not that I would ever tell him that. We live in an apartment downtown now. Michelle was… livid, but she didn't have a choice really. She had to give us up. Personally, I think she'll just miss having someone to beat on who won't fight back. No matter how much she might hate me, I _was_ good for that at least. I hope I never see her again._

_Money's tight, but it's infinitely better with just the five of us. I still get paid for working on anything with a motor, and Merrin has a paid internship at an applied physics lab down at the University. It pays minimum wage, but that doesn't matter because the nerds that inhabit the place don't care that he's purple. I made the mistake of telling him that I was proud of him, and he hasn't yet let me forget it since. (Or anyone else that matter.) Wes and Wen are just happy to have steady meals._

_But we're not really Henry, Merrin, Shelly, Wesley, and Wendell anymore._

_It all started just a few days after we moved in to our new apartment. (I still have to share a room with Merrin, by the way. I swear to God I'm going to kill that boy one day.) Henry was out doing whatever the moron does in his spare time when he saw someone getting held up in an alley. Being such a goody-goody, he used his blue-hulk-glow and totally beat the bad-guy up and hauled him the police station. That was all well and good by me. Being a good neighbor and all that._

_But NO! Now, Henry's got it in his thick blue head that since we've all been 'blessed' by being turned into a walking freak show, that it's our sacred duty to 'ensure the safety and tranquility of all the law-abiding citizens of our great city'._

_Six words. Too many bloody comic books, Henry._

_We aren't superheroes. We're a pathetic group of street rats that just happened to be loitering at ground zero of a rainbow comet, which through some misbegotten fallacy of logic gave us creepy powers. We're kids. Hell, the twins aren't even teens yet!_

_The boys are all really into it though. They're morons: all of them. Unfortunately for me, they're _my _morons. Family sticks together. We've always taken care of each other, and I know fighting crime is stupidly dangerous, especially since I'm the only one who can really fight in the first place. That makes it my job to help them, and keep them from being more idiotic than they already are and getting themselves killed._

_So we've been moonlighting as Team Go of Go City. Matching spandex costumes that Henry paid some poor girl he used to date to sew (color coordinated, of course) and everything. They're rather garish and asymmetrical in design, but once I hemmed mine into looking more like a proper cat suit than a potato sack, I find I enjoy looking and feeling so rakishly powerful. It makes me look dangerous. Matching my brothers ruins the effect, of course, but I figure if I don't stand too close to them (not like I'd want to, anyways) it'll all work out fine. Henry even insisted we re-name ourselves to protect our 'secret identities'. (Which is stupid, considering EVERYONE in Go City saw us on the news when the comet hit us.) But talking sense into Henry is like trying to teach table manners to a baboon. Still, the names themselves aren't bad. Henry is Hego, Merrin is Mego, Wes and Wen are Wego (they didn't want separate names) and I'm Shego. Clever, really. They incorporate our names (Shelly instead of Michelle, in my case. I asked for Michi again, but my brothers have always refused to call me that, and Merrin said Migo was too much like Mego anyways.) and correlate oddly to our characters. Wego is two people, hence 'we', Merrin loves himself, hence 'me', Henry thinks he's He-man, hence 'he', and I'm the only girl, hence 'she'._

_As for crime fighting… it's not bad. I don't exactly feel inclined to save people who never bothered to save me, but at least I get to let go and _fight_ something. Even if it is just a purse-snatcher or petty robber. Hopefully, my brothers will get bored with this tripe, and we can all move on to our normal lives again._

_Or as normal as they ever could be, anyways._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>Slowly, Kim closed the diary and settled it gently in her lap. She stared at it pensively, stomach alive with a cascade of butterflies. Shego. Where Shelly-Mae's signature used to be, the name of her ex-nemesis now rested. Suddenly, everything that she'd read felt all too real. She was trapped in a daze all through dinner, processing the day's revelations. This gave the tweebs the opportunity to filch potatoes from her plate without fear of retribution, not that she much cared, and her sleep later that night was fitful. Though this wasn't exactly surprising, considering that she dreamt of Shego frying her ass like breaded chicken for violating her personal thoughts.<p>

Yeah. When Shego found out, she was screwed, Kim decided. And not in the fun way.

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN:** Ta-da! Shelly is Shego now! Up next is... more of the same, actually. But in the best sense._

_(Oh, and the fun fact for THIS chapter is me telling you that the little anecdote Kim shared about getting kissed in a store actually happened to me when I was sixteen. Cept it was an Albertson's, not a Smarty-Mart. I almost died on the spot. It was one of the strangest things I've ever experienced, but it's a GREAT story, and my brother asked me to put it in there for you guys, so I did.)_

_Leave a review! Or I'll sic Rufus on you!_


	4. Chapter 4: Hero

_A/N: Thanks to _zzzoo99, Guest, Ponks, gypsy069, crkswolf, jim89, MisterMagic25, _and_ Lhyaran _for all their wonderful comments!_

_Again, I'm a couple days early on the update, but I _really_ don't want to study for my micro cell biology test. Really with a capital 'R'. So instead I'm doing laundry and posting more chapters. (My life is so exciting, isn't it?) Either way, enjoy!_

* * *

><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Four<br>Hero

* * *

><p>When Kim woke the next morning, she immediately dashed into the shower and scrubbed herself clean before throwing her pajamas back on and crawling beneath her blankets again. It was a flagrantly lazy thing to do, but she didn't have any plans on moving anytime soon. Not until she finished Shego's journal.<p>

She was already a dead woman walking, she reasoned. Sating her ethically questionable curiosity wouldn't make her any less or more so. Dead was dead. So why not? Kim did a mental double-take at this line of thinking, and smacked herself on the forehead with her palm, reprimanding herself for being morbid. Again.

That being said, she still proceeded to pick up the little purple diary of Michelle Mae Govetsky and open to the page where she'd left off. She simply did so feeling more idiotic than she usually felt. But hey, she was Kim Possible, human cockroach. She was pretty death-resistant. Shego's future homicidal rage was an unstoppable force pitted against her 'Anything's possible for a Possible' mojo, an unmovable object. She gave it a 50-50 chance she would live to legal drinking age.

Kim could work with those odds.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_I am fifteen years old today. It's December 2, 1999. It's been busy since I last wrote, that's for sure. I've been keeping up on my studies in the martial arts of course, and I've been controlling my powers very well. There's more to them than I ever thought possible, actually. (Not that I ever imagined such a thing was possible in the first place, but whatever.) At first, I thought all I could do was light myself on fire and burn like a bonfire, my hands being especially susceptible to my powers. I almost immediately relegated my use of my powers to my hands, because I tend to burn off the clothes I'm wearing otherwise. With Team Go happening though, we have a bit more money coming in. We're not really being heroes, per say. Hego's making it a press run, for the most part. I can't complain about the donations we're receiving though. Stupid suckers all over the city want to 'help our great city's resident heroes promote justice' and throw money at us in front of the media. With the money, we had new suits made._

_Hego's is durable, so the cloth doesn't tear on impact if he punches something. Mego's suit grows and shrinks as he does, so he isn't running around showing off his (quite literally) tiny little pecker. Wego's suits somehow reproduce as they do now. (Don't ask me how. All I heard was 'blah-blah boring blah' when Hego tried to explain it to me.) MY suit is highly flame retardant, with special gloves tipped in porous metal that lets my green glow out to play more easily than solid material does. That's how I found out that my powers can do more than just toast marshmellows._

_I actually got shot, if you can believe it. We were stopping a bank robbery, and one of the robbers had a handgun that he was aiming at Wesley. I was so angry that he was going to shoot my little brother that I went full-body-burn and jumped at him. When he shot at me, my plasma (That's what Mego calls it, because it's apparently not fire.) actually _melted_ the bullet slightly so that it didn't pierce my body when it hit me. It just gave me the mother of all bruises. My brothers were freaking out because they saw me get shot, but I was actually fine, and I proceeded to kick some serious ass._

_I'm a badass._

_After that, I decided to do some experimenting. I found out quite a few things. My plasma always starts at my hands. Or fingers, really. I can either contain it there, or allow it to spread over my entire body, like I did when I went 'bulletproof'. I can also control how hot it burns. I can melt through metal or I can warm up Wego's hands when it's cold outside. Temperature changes seem to be largely mood driven, and whenever I get mad and burn hot, I think of Yoda. You know, 'Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.' Except the suffering is for whoever pissed me off. Because I'm fireproof. So are my brothers actually, to some extent, though not nearly so much as me. We all have mad metabolisms too, especially when we're hurt, and have been known to tuck away more food than is strictly physically possible if we're healing. We all heal ridiculously fast, which is probably a good thing, considering our idiotic day jobs._

_None of the boys have given up on Team Go. As I've said before, the whole team of rainbow vigilantes in spandex is surprisingly popular with the sheeple. (I told Hego we should march in a gay pride parade, because we'd fit right in. He didn't think I was funny.) We don't really fight anyone really bad though, which I think is a joke. More than one weirdo though. This one guy who we put away just last week has a bird fetish or something, and we once arrested a girl who only stole blue nail polish from day spas. (And it was _so_ not her color.)_

_But I don't like being a hero. Not like this. If we were doing this to help people, I think I might actually enjoy it, but that's not what's happening. This is us being Henry's personal LARPing group to fulfill his comic book fantasies. We only help certain people at certain times, and spend more time playing to the media than doing anything worthwhile. Wes and Wen aren't really old enough to understand the difference, but Henry knows better. If we're going to say we're heroes, we'd better damned well be heroes._

_But I'm just silly little Shelly-Mae, the green freak with no friends and a bad attitude. What could _I_ possibly know?_

_There is true evil in this world. I've seen it. Bird-pervert Aviarius isn't it. If Hgeo truly wanted to make a difference, he would let us fight against the hunger of starving kids, and the creeps who wander the alleys downtown hoping to corner a woman for 'fun'. He would let us bust pimps that take little kids and force them into prostitution, or parents that beat on their children just because they're there._

_But Henry has never wanted to see any of that, and he won't fight something he can't see. And I feel sick at myself every time I see a camera; because I know that the people who have suffered –people like ME—look at the show we put on and think that we aren't heroes. Not really._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>Kim's gut twisted as she read Shego's opinions on heroes, and she grimaced slightly. She supposed that the young Shego had a point. A true hero doesn't only save the people that are easy to save. However, Kim also felt from personal experience that there are some forms of justice that a vigilante just can't mete out. Perhaps more importantly, she knew that a hero can't save everyone, and if you fail, you only make things worse.<p>

It was why she stuck to missions with take-over-the-world goons. Partially, at least. Being able to say that she had indeed 'saved the world' certainly appealed to Kim's bid for her parents' approval, but it also allowed her to save as many people as she possibly could at once, even if most of them never knew it. The latter reason was the most applicable to Shego's arguments.

And truly, Kim understood where Shego was coming from. Kim had always lead a rather sheltered life, growing up in an upper middle class suburbia, and it had taken a lot of growing up and traveling for her to really understand the scope of human suffering. For Shelly-Mae, it was personal. She'd grown up in deplorable conditions, and she was far more acquainted with pain than Kim had ever been. It was understandable that the only female member of Team Go had wanted to help people like herself. Hell, it was even understandable that a baboon like Hego would prefer to forget that his childhood had ever existed.

But Kim knew that being a true hero to those in need wasn't a task that could be accomplished by any one person, or even five, super-powered or not. Society had to handle it as a whole; otherwise, nothing would ever change for the better. As a vigilante, attempting to solve problems like those young Shego identified was the equivalent to scrubbing the floor of a strip mall with a toothbrush, or giving an AIDS patient an Advil. Kim was all about doing the impossible, but there was impossible, and then there was _impossible_.

It made Kim worry, because she knew that young Shego was only setting herself up for disappointment.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_December 2, 2000. I'm sixteen today. If you can believe it, Hego actually _built_ Go Tower! It's dumb. Really, it is. Any villain could target us for miles. And I'm stuck in it. Except for school and missions, I'm not allowed to leave because apparently, I'm grounded._

_Grounded!_

_There aren't words for how pissed I am right now. Henry has no right to ground me. He might be my legal guardian, but he's not my parent. He's being a hypocrite! I didn't even do anything wrong! I was HELPING people!_

_So there's this villain. Penny Savir, she calls herself. She's a bank robber, and a classic white-collar criminal. Filthy rich. We locked her up, of course, but before the boys in blue took her away, I managed to get out of her that she kept a cash prize in a safe in her penthouse. So the night after her arrest, I took the jet (We have a Go-jet with a garish paint job now. I'm the only one of us that can fly it, and do the maintenance. It is unequivocally my property in the Go Tower.) and flew over. I broke in, found the safe, cracked it, took the cash, and left. It was clean. No evidence that I'd ever been there, except that now a criminal is short four million dollars cash. I divvyed up the money into sixteen briefcases and left them at different charities. The next morning, they were talking about the anonymous donations on the news, and I felt… proud. I helped people eat, and get medicine, and have roofs over their heads, and any other number of things._

_I told my brothers what I'd done, and Hego threw a fit. Hence being grounded for the foreseeable future. Henry told me that no sister of his would _ever_ commit acts of evil. Never ever._

_But the thing is, even though stealing is wrong, how wrong was I to steal from a thief and give that money to the people who really needed it? If the police had seized the money, you could be sure as hell that those four million dollars would have padded the pockets of fat politicians before you could say dickwad. The charities I gave it to would have never seen it if I hadn't done what I did, and I don't regret it. I didn't take Penny Savir's money for myself. Hell, it probably wasn't even hers in the first place. And the only people who know that I did it are my brothers!_

_So what's Hego's defect? Mego and Wego actually congratulated me on a job well done, until Hego bullied them into not talking to me. Henry's idea of right and wrong isn't the end-all and be-all of morality, Diary. Morality can't be quantified. My conscience is clear, and I wouldn't take back my actions for anything._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>This latest entry gave Kim pause. She already knew that Shego would eventually give up on the hero business and enter the world of villainy. It was, after all, how they had met. So it was safe to say that Shego's first trip into the grey areas of right and wrong gave Kim some seriously bad vibes. Not that she could fault Shego's logic, but because Kim knew that this was only the beginning of a path that would turn Shelly-Mae's world on its head. Reading Shego's insistence that she was doing the right thing by doing the wrong thing… it gave Kim shivers, knowing what was going to happen.<p>

Shego was just so young, here. Kim supposed that it was hypocritical of her to say that, considering that she herself had been in the hero business since the age of thirteen, but it was true. Kim had learned a lot about the limitations of being a hero in her time, and she knew just how crushing it was to have to look a starving person in the eye and tell them that you couldn't help them. It seemed to Kim that young Shego had yet to learn that pain, especially after having been so successful with her reappropriation of Penny Savir's funds. Kim feared that it would be a hard lesson for Shelly-Mae to learn.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_It is December 2, 2001, and I am seventeen today. I graduated high school early at the end of the year. Guess it pays to be locked up in Go Tower with nothing to do but take online classes, eh? I started college classes as Go University in August, and I'm on track to graduate in two years, thanks to the credits I already racked up while in High School. Much to the surprise of absolutely everyone that knows me, I'm majoring in child development. They really shouldn't be surprised though: it's not like I hate people. I just hate morons._

_Kids, though, I like. They can be cruel, but they're also innocent, and they can be taught kindness. Besides, I'm of the opinion that understanding others helps you understand yourself, and no one would ever dare question my selfishness. I like going to the University. It's different, but I enjoy my studies, and I've even made a few acquaintances that I might even one day consider friends. It's been good for me to get out for a little while._

_I think I should relate what happened today, though. It was a breakthrough, of sorts. At least with Merrin, Wesley, and Wendell. We were eating breakfast together (because it's birthday tradition for all of us) and Wendell made a comment about how Merrin always did make pancakes better than Scott._

_God, I hadn't thought about that bastard since we got our powers. I melted my fork. Henry got mad at me for that, and we ended up arguing like we always do. Except this time, he shouted at me that I ruined the best meal ticket we ever had by getting Scott arrested and being a selfish bitch, like always. And… I lost it. I was so angry, I was burning the floor where I stood, and I was yelling that if Scott had molested Henry, he would have hit him too._

_Now, normally Mego and Wego stay out of our way when Hego and I are fighting, but all three of them started freaking out when I said that. Which is a first, because I know for a fact that they never quite forgave me for starting that fight with that creep. I didn't understand what their issue was at first._

_All this time, and I never thought that they _didn't know_ what Scott did to me. I thought they just didn't see it as a big deal, or something, but Mego and Wego _didn't know_. And they actually apologized to me for holding the incident against me for all these years._

_Apologized!_

_It was probably one of the best birthday gifts I've ever received. I feel so… light, in the wake of it. Which is funny, because I didn't know that pain was something I'd been carrying around until it was gone. Henry was the only one who didn't say anything, but I don't think he'll bring up Scott again. I think he'd just prefer to pretend that it never happened._

_In this case, I might agree with him._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today is December 15, 2001. I know I just wrote, but something important happened, and I didn't know who else to turn to, Diary._

_Yesterday, Michelle –Mother—died. After all the drinking, her liver gave out._

_Really, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. I just… never thought the harpy would ever actually die. I mean, isn't there a point where you are so evil you just become immortal? None of us had seen her since we left to live with Henry, so none of us knew that her health was flagging._

_The boys are all weepy about it, but I'm not sad. I… I hated Mother. I hate her. I hate her more than I've ever hated anyone. More than Scott, or the kids who spent their entire school careers campaigning to make mine miserable, or even Emma, who said she was my friend but abandoned me anyways. I hate her because she just _let_ these things happen to me. Her child._

_Why didn't she love me?_

_I got into another fight with Henry. He said I was a heartless bitch not to feel sad that my own mother is dead._

_And maybe I am heartless. What kind of person hates their own mother? I do wonder how Lauren (my friend from my statistics class) can stand being around me. I'm not a good person. I have a temper. I'm condescending and abrasive, and take entirely too much pleasure in beating the crap out of people. I hate my own mother._

_And I call myself a hero?_

_Love,_

_the last Michelle"_

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_It's December 27, 2001. Everything seems to be happening at once, and I don't know how much longer I can take this. For once, I was actually enjoying my life, and then _this month_ happened._

_Hego, Mego, and Wego are taking the month off from hero-duty, to mourn Mother. I don't understand why, as she never took care of any of us, but I didn't think I had the right to argue at the time. I just kept doing the small missions by myself. It's not a big deal, really, and it's almost easier to get things done without my brothers. (They're not exactly subtle, nor are they the best fighters.) Four days ago—two days before Christmas—I stopped to help with a car wreck. It was pretty bad. An SUV t-boned a limo, and the limo was on fire, with people trapped inside. The paramedics hadn't arrived yet, and since I'm fireproof, I thought 'Why not?'_

_So I rescued the driver, then pulled two men from the back one at a time. It was hard to see through the fire and smoke, and while I _am _flame retardant, I find that I still need to breathe. It took me longer than I would have liked to free the last man. I was choking and blind, and he was trapped underneath a twisted bit of metal. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I could've used Hego right then._

_Because that last man didn't survive._

_Normally, it wouldn't have been a big deal. I mean, people die in car wrecks all the time. Sure, it's sad, but I did what I could to save him long before the paramedics got there, and I saved the other two's lives for sure. I did my best. Unfortunately for me, the man who died wasn't just _any_ man. He was a member of the Silverton family, who are probably the wealthiest individuals in the state._

_I guess it made them feel better to have someone to blame for Benjamin Silverton's death, because that's what they did to me. As a member –even the least popular—of Team Go, I'm fairly accustomed to being lauded by the media. It's just that after that day, I learned that the media is like a dog trained for those fighting rings. Reporters will turn on you just as fast as they'll praise you._

_Goodbye, Shego, hero of Go City. Allow me to introduce you to Shego, screw-up kid playing with the lives of respected citizens like they're her own personal toy soldiers. Shego, the reason an innocent life was lost._

_It's bullshit. But the media and the public buy what the Silverton lawyers sell._

_And let me tell you, with the amount of times I've saved Go City's collective asses? I never thought they'd turn on me like this. Hego is apoplectic, and I've been confined to Go Tower until everything blows over. Merrin says that everything will be okay, and that Go City will be back to loving me in no time._

_I don't doubt that he's right, but the thing is: if this is how the world treats a hero, I don't want to be a hero anymore._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>With an exhausted sigh, Kim closed her eyes and leaned back against her headboard. The line a hero danced upon with public opinion was a treacherous one. Kim should know, considering her whole life so far had been devoted to cultivating a stellar public image. Shego's willingness to do exactly as she pleased and damn the consequences had been a trait that Kim had envied from the beginning. She just never knew that this was a learned behavior.<p>

Kim wished that she had the courage to be like Shego. She had no desire to enter the field of villainy really, but she'd come to find that constantly pretending to be something she wasn't was as much a prison as any jail cell, and she wanted out. Ever since the Lorwardians had ruined her graduation and she had been seriously contemplating college options, Kim had been filled with a desire that she'd never had the courage to acknowledge to anyone, or _herself _for that matter. She did so now, however.

Kim didn't want to be a hero anymore either.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Gasp! Can you just_ feel _the drama, people? Shego is just about to fall from grace, and the suspense is just killing me! (Well, not really, since I already wrote that part. But I betcha it's killing _you_, isn't it? *insert Drakken's evil laugh*) Don't worry. Next time, you'll all get to see Shego become an 'evil' villain, and see her reaction to meeting a certain redhead hero. Won't _that_ be interesting?_

_Reviews feed the souls of nerdy college students, so be sure to leave a few for me! I'm just too cute to starve to death._


	5. Chapter 5: Villain

_A/N: Many thanks to the wonderful people who have left reviews! I'm so glad you dropped a few words for me. Free internet hugs to _zzzoo99, Schpwuette, jim89, MisterMagic25, Magic Basher54986, Lhyaran, Ponks, MezzicStorm, _and _Firelord515.

_I think you all will like this chapter!_

* * *

><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Five<br>Villain

* * *

><p>Kim recalled with great clarity the day she had first met Team Go. She'd accidentally been given Hego's blue super-strength glow for the day, and Hego had tracked her down and brought her to Go Tower to better explain the situation. She remembered vividly the moment when Ron had asked Hego if he knew Shego, and Hego had claimed her then-nemesis to be his sister.<p>

At the time, the words 'Shego' and 'sister' really didn't seem like they belonged in the same sentence, and Kim was thrown even further into disbelief when the word 'hero' was added to the mix.

She'd wanted to know everything.

So Hego had given her his version of events; from the comet giving he and his siblings their powers, the formation of Team Go, and his self-righteous, self-assigned mission, to Shego's defection and the subsequent collapse of Team Go.

'The more we fought evil,' he'd said, 'the more Shego liked it.'

It was a gross oversimplification that Kim now took great offense to on Shego's behalf. (Though if she were being honest with herself, Kim doubted that there was much Hego did or said that Shego didn't take offense to anyways.) But the reason she felt so strongly over the issue was because she was in the process of reading Shego's account of her fall from grace, and it was something that she _understood_ and could relate to.

Kim wasn't Shego. For all their similarities, they were fundamentally very different, and Kim knew that she would not have made the same choices were she in Shego's place. However, she did not begrudge Shego these choices. For all her shortcomings, Shego –unlike Kim—had always remained true to herself no matter what. Shego wouldn't be Shego unless she acted exactly as she had, and Kim admitted to herself that she was glad of it. Shego had been a good nemesis, and Kim missed sparring with the woman both physically and verbally.

What was Shego doing now, Kim wondered? Most likely, she was holed up in a new safe zone, hoping to avoid any local authorities. Kim made a mental note to speak to Dr. Director about Shego's warrant and jurisdiction issues just as soon as she'd finished here. After all, she _had_ promised to do what she could for her, and Kim wasn't one to go back on her word once it was given. Once she'd worked her magic, Kim hoped that Shego would be able to waltz through even a police headquarters in full cat suit regalia without fear of arrest, if the urge struck her. So long as she continued to keep on the right side of the law, that is.

Returning to her room after having taken a brief break, Kim lounged back onto her mattress and returned to her reading, nibbling her lower lip in apprehension.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_January 6, 2002. Mark the date, Diary, because after today… well, let's just say I'm definitely not a hero anymore._

_I couldn't take it. Maybe that makes me weak, but I couldn't wear the shackles of Henry's hypocrisy and the world's fickleness any more. So I broke free, in the most spectacular manner possible._

_I started off by blasting Hego through the side of Go Tower when he decided to lecture me about 'doing the right thing' for the umpteenth time. He won't be able to move around much for the next few days, which gives me a head start, and MAN did it feel good to do that! Mego and Wego didn't stop me from leaving. They just looked… sad. But they'll be fine. Mego will always take care of himself, and he'll see to it that Wego is fine too. They're better off without me around to screw things up for them anyways._

_I then proceeded to 'borrow' a private jet and visit three separate private estates of some rich assholes and white-collar criminals too rich to be arrested, and I robbed them blind just to prove to myself, and the world, that I could. Frankly, considering the insurance they likely have, it won't even be a real loss. I ended up in New York after ditching the jet, and went to see the one person who I _know_ can get me what I want._

_Jack Hench._

_Because according to Hego: if I'm not a hero, then I'm a villain. And if that's how it has to be, I'd rather be a villain than a self-righteous pretender. I'll end up doing less jail time that way._

_Don't get me wrong. I don't hurt innocent people, and I_ definitely_ don't kill. Not anyone. Ever. However, I have no objections to teaching fat, rich, corrupt jackasses a little humility. And quite frankly, stealing is _fun_. After the disaster with Benjamin Silverton and before I left Team Go, I spent quite a lot of time practicing slipping in and out of security systems undetected, just for something to do. (There are a disturbingly large number of paranoid people in Go City.) It's not like I hadn't done a bit of breaking and entering before as a hero, either. I'm not bragging when I say I'm good at that. Taking a prize as a reward for a job well done only makes the game more thrilling, really._

_Mr. Hench said that he could keep me on as a freelancing thief and mercenary for hire, which I'm glad for. Hench might be a skeazy businessman, but he's smart, and he's the most reputable hiring agency available to the criminal world. I'm glad now that Hego never had the balls to take our crime fighting outside of city limits, seeing as how there's not much that separates me from Team Go even now if anyone outside of the city actually knew who I was before. I've dropped the identity of Michelle Govetsky entirely, and I am now only known as Shego. Just Shego. I kept my suit too. It's useful, and sexy. But it's also very, very recognizable. Villains don't take kindly to heroes. Not even the reformed ones. With any luck, no one will recognize me as a former goody-two-shoes._

_Family sticks together. That's always been our motto. I never thought that_ I_ would be the first one to break that promise, but it's for the best. It's in my contract with Hench that I don't do work in Go City, ever, so I won't ever have to see or fight my brothers again, if I don't want to. __I think I'll miss Wego the most though. One day, I hope that they'll understand that I couldn't keep living like I was, and forgive me. Until that day, a clean break will be best. For all of us. I'll miss Go University too, and Lauren especially. She texted me, earlier, that she was breaking off contact with me in light of my recent actions. That, I can understand even though leaving her behind is probably the one thing in all this mess I regret besides leaving Wego. Lauren's a quiet soul, and it wouldn't be fair for her girlfriend to be a wanted fugitive. My classes, at least, I'll still be able to keep up with online. It's not something I have to do, but it's something I want._

_And now, I'm free. I can do _whatever_ I want._

_Even become a villain with a degree in child development._

_Love,_

_A Villain"_

* * *

><p>Kim nodded to herself. And there it was. The fall.<p>

It was surprisingly anticlimactic. Kim had seen it coming a mile away, foreknowledge notwithstanding. Honestly, what did Henry expect? Shelly-Mae was a free spirit, and as her brother, he should have known better than anyone how she would react to being locked away.

Moron.

Seventeen. That's how old Shego was when she left Go City. Kim could hardly imagine doing the same thing a year ago when she'd been that age, but Shelly-Mae had done it. And she'd thrived. Kim was more than a little impressed, honestly. Anyone else, and the villainous community would have chewed her up and spit her out. But not Shego. Kim truly never expected anything less though.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today is July 10, 2002. For the past few months, I've been freelancing as a thief and mercenary, and I've actually been doing really well. Genuine superpowers aren't so easy to come by, and I _am_ the best, so I'm actually in pretty high demand. I've stolen things I'm pointed to, guarded things I'm shown to, and sown general mayhem amongst henchmen when I'm directed to. In all honesty, being a villain is very much like being a hero, except that it pays better, and so long as you prove you can kick ass, no one judges you for any quirks. Like being green. It's… nice. A little boring and annoying at times, but nice. It's not ideal, but I don't regret it._

_I'm writing because I've accepted a long-term contract as a sidekick for one Dr. Drew 'Drakken' Lipsky. For a minimum of two years, I'm pretty much his stooge. Once, I might have objected to playing second fiddle to anyone, but here, I can see the benefits. A villain's –in the classic sense of the word, such as those HenchCo works with—main goal is to take over the world. (I won't work for petty criminals. Villains have a code of honor, at least, and I respect that.) Were I to be the head honcho, so to speak, that would be my goal too._

_But what would I do with the world once I had it?_

_No, sidekick is it for me. Conceivably, I could make more money going freelance, but a contract with a supervillain gets me a steady paycheck, health care, a roof over my head, a guaranteed job, and a boosted reputation in the field. I figure as an ex-hero, every little bit counts. I chose Drakken because he's a blue moron._

_Ironic, right?_

_Drakken has the book smarts, but hasn't the sense to come in out of the rain. That being said, I was able to negotiate a VERY good contract with the fool with lots of zeros on the pay line and some pretty big numbers for vacation days. Being so incompetent, I'm also _very_ certain that he will never actually take over the world. So as far as I see it, I'm going to be sitting pretty for a while. Sure, it will probably get unbearably boring being stuck in one place, but my contract allows for plenty of moonlighting, and the benefits outweigh the detriments._

_This whole evil thing? It's not so bad. I can do this._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>At this, Kim snickered aloud. Blue moron indeed. Poor Shego had no idea just how incompetent her future employer really was, did she? Well, she was in for a nasty surprise then. Kim didn't envy her.<p>

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_I'm eighteen today. It's December 2, 2002. And I've got so say, working for Dr. D has been… interesting. For one, I'm never sure if the man's a genius or a complete, gibbering idiot. He has his moments on both ends of the spectrum. Thankfully, he's quite trainable, given the right –ahemPLASMA—motivation. I've pretty much been living like a not-so-moral queen amongst all these pathetic henchmen, what with my bitch-face persona. And I rarely even have to do more than lounge about being derogatory._

_It's not bad._

_The only part of the job that's actually been any challenge is, shockingly, a kid. She's Drakken's 'nemesis' and shows up with her doofus little friend to blow up Dr. D's various death rays. It's actually kind of funny to watch the moron squeal like a little girl for a reason that doesn't involve green, high-temperature projectiles. A good change of pace._

_The kid though, Kim Possible, is good for her age. She's probably just as good as I was when I was fourteen. She lacks finesse, but she's wicked fast, and it's been fun to fight her. I thought at first that it would have been kinder of me to just take her down quickly and just break her legs in several places. Injure her so badly that she gives up the life she's condemned herself to. I'm a selfish creature at heart though, and I usually let her get away without too much damage because honestly, it's a spectacular relief from the monotony to spar with an opponent that improves so drastically with each fight. If I had to describe Possible's style, I'd choose to call her ridiculously adaptable. She drives Drakken absolutely up the wall with her constant box of new tricks, which is hilarious. Her little motto of 'I can do anything!' is hilarious too, but as a sickeningly all-American girl hero, she doesn't seem to agree._

_Ah, well. My sense of humor is doomed to be peerless, I suppose._

_Some part of me hopes she'll stick around, though. Just so I have more ammunition to mock Drakken with. With her whole hero shtick, Possible reminds me of a smarter version of Hego, and I must admit that it's endlessly funny to see. Let's just hope that she doesn't get herself killed before my contract is up._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>Blinking, Kim took a few moments to process before breaking out into an impish sort of grin. That was her. Shego was writing about <em>her!<em> It was definitely strange, viewing their spats from the other side of the fence, but not entirely unfamiliar. Kim took minor offence to Shego's blatant dismissal of her abilities, but she supposed that she shouldn't be needlessly arrogant and opted instead to feel slight vindication that she'd been right about Shego enjoying their fights just as much as she did. And besides, Kim had improved greatly over four years, largely thanks to Shego's skill pushing her to be better if she were being entirely truthful. Kim knew that she'd be giving Shego a run for her money soon enough though. The woman wouldn't be talking so big _then_, she thought to herself.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_December 2, 2003. I'm nineteen today, and still kicking. That being said, I'm going to kill Drakken. Really, I am. He's going to _end_ in a fiery rush of green doom. I'm sure even _Hego_ would understand why I resorted to murder. The villainous community is filled with people that are… quirky, but Dr. D has some _serious _mommy issues. He's lately started on his 'evil family' kick, which is creepy in and of itself, but what's really getting to me is the constant buildup of little things._

_Like his inability to grasp the concept of logic, for instance. Or the general ineptitude. Karaoke night is one that makes me just lose my shit, but unfortunately, it's in my contract that I have to attend at least 50% of them. And don't even get me started on Drewbie's inability to open his own pickle jars. It's almost… sad._

_I'm still going to –God save me—renew my contract when it comes up in a few months, stupid as that is. Despite everything, I still get paid excellently, and I _do_ need the money. I'm sure Drakken thinks that I just spend it on frivolous things, but over half of it ends up in the hands of various charities and children's shelters. I've come to realize that… well, it's all I can do to help people like me. The evils of our society aren't something that I can fight. I still don't think that Hego's any less of a jackass, but he was right to try and dissuade me from believing that we could solve those kinds of problems by merely attempting to treat the symptoms of the disease._

_So I go at it like a politician. Throw money at the problem, and hope it goes away. It makes a difference, even if it isn't a big one, and it's the only thing I can think to do short of taking over the world myself. (Which is _so_ not going to happen. Can you say _boring_? Though if I did, Bueno fricking Nacho would be the first thing to go, I swear on the damned Bible.)_

_And to be honest, another reason to stay is the fact that keeping such a bumbling twit as Drakken out of any significant jail time is actually doing more for my reputation than stealing the Mona Lisa probably would. Lord knows it's harder. Dr. D is fairly well known in the villainous community, and anyone that can put up with him gets some serious brownie points. At the very least, at least I'm recognized as the best, especially considering that I'm just about the only person that can handle little Kimmie on a semi-regular basis. I'll admit, she's been getting better, and it's always fun to play. She's got a stick so far up her ass she's sneezing self-righteous splinters, but she's resourceful. She's taken me by surprise more than once._

_It's too bad that if I want to keep playing, I probably can't kill Drakken. Decisions. Best sleep on it._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>Upon reading Shego's description of her with a stick up her ass, Kim couldn't decide if she wanted to feel offended or give in to temptation and burst into a fit of giggles. She had to hand it to her: Shego used some vivid imagery. She'd be able to write a killer essay, if she wanted to. It almost made Kim regret not paying true attention in class when Shego had been her substitute teacher, as she'd been too distracted by the horrifying thought of Shego and <em>Barkin<em> on a date to actually focus.

Ah, well. Lesson learned. Eventually. Never let it be said that Shego wasn't an effective instructor.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_It's December 2, 2004, and I'm twenty today. I did end up renewing my contract with Dr. D, but I still don't feel any less homicidal towards him. ESPECIALLY after that moodulator incident. I still gag a little when I think about it._

_Though, speaking of missions that went totally FUBAR, I gotta say that I nearly had a mental breakdown when Princess busted into Drakken's lair with HEGO'S blue glow! Sure, Kimmie's loosened up some since last year, and has started dishing out as well as taking it, but THAT was a lesson in keeping my composure, if there ever was one. Because she showed up WITH HEGO._

_Aviarius is right up there with Drakken now, on my kill list. Just for starting that whole clusterfuck._

_I hadn't seen any of my brothers since the day I left. I didn't _want _to see them. But they were in trouble, and even if I was the one who left, I can't really forget that family sticks together… and they were in trouble. So I let Princess drag me to her domestic paradise in Middleton, and then the Aviarius's 'nest' in Go City. The whole incident was so many kinds of messed up, but I got through it. I even had my brothers' powers for a short time. I nearly killed Drakken for saying it, but it's true that I let Possible take the scepter from me. Even if I had to throw an 'evil' fit just to make Hego shut up, it was nice to see Wego –and even Mego—again. Despite the emotional trauma of the whole situation, I found that being a hero again and fighting with Kimmie instead of against her was surprisingly fun. Weird as hell, but still fun._

_But then, so was fucking Master Sun's niece, and I don't do _that_ every day either. I train with Master Sun for my animal forms twice a week. He's good at what he does for an old, grumpy fart, and he makes me better, which is all that matters. I probably won't continue to see him, or Clarice, for much longer. I've always learned martial arts quickly. Aside from piloting and tinkering, it's really the only thing that I love to do, and it's what I'm best at. Perhaps I'll find another master after Sun. Perhaps not._

_I'll just have to wait and see, won't I?_

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today is May 3, 2006. I turned twenty-one just a few months ago. (God, I'm old.) I didn't write then because I was quite busy running around stealing things for Drakken, and whatnot. I'm writing now because after a stay in a hospital, and then prison, Motor Ed of all people finally busted me out. Not that I couldn't have busted _myself_ out, but I…had a lot of thinking to do. I paid the moron back by helping him out with his hairbrained scheme (Honestly, I can see the relation to Dr. D.) and am now currently lying low in my apartment before going back for Drewbie._

_And I'm seriously considering just letting him rot._

_As I'm sure you know, Diary, Kimmie and I have a special brand of adversarial relationship. We fight. It's what we do. But there are some things we _don't_ do. Ever. Like play dirty with each other's emotions. Sure, we can taunt and tease, but that's not the same thing as messing with the heart. I know that, and she knows that, and we stick to the hand-to-hand fighting, because that's how we play. It's a respect thing._

_I guess I sort of forgot that Drakken _doesn't _know that. And maybe it is my fault, for assuming that the man was completely incapable of ever actually forming a take-over-the-world scheme that would actually be effective. When he wanted to keep it a 'surprise', I just dismissed it entirely._

_I was wrong, and I paid for it. I would have never sent a synthodrone after Princess, designed for the sole purpose of seducing her, nor allowed such a plan to proceed if I'd known. That's not my style. I would have thought she had known that, and maybe she did, at first. And I really did try to warn her to give up, in that fight we had before the slimebag electrocuted her. I'd hoped she'd know something was wrong when I cut loose on her like I did, battle-suit notwithstanding. I couldn't warn her with 'Eric' watching, but even after he zapped her, I left her stuff within reach._

_I suppose I really ought not to have needled her like I did when she went after me, but I was hurt by the fact that she _actually blamed me_ for what happened. Stupid, really. We're enemies and all, and I've never given her a reason to think I _wouldn't_ do something like that. She was hurting on top of it. When she kicked me into that tower though… I've never seen Kimmie like that before. She _wanted_ to hurt me. I could see it on her face and in her body, and I… let her do it. I don't know why, but I did. I suppose I felt like I deserved it, even though it was Drakken's plan and not mine. I think that that was the closest I've ever come to dying since the comet hit._

_Princess has a dark side. Not that it surprised me at all. People buy her sugar-n-spice act like it's the latest fad at Club Banana, but I know that's all it is: an act. Some martial arts masters say that they can know a person from the moment they throw the first punch, and Princess and I have been fighting for three years now. Surely that counts for something? She has a lot of anger –no, rage—built up inside, and even worse, a sadness that's absolutely crippling. She hides it well, but I can see it in the way she moves sometimes, just like I could see her slowly beginning to enjoy our little tussles._

_I suppose that enjoyment will be gone now, though. Because apparently, she hates me._

_Princess is a lot of things, but I don't think she is what she pretends to be. Just like I wasn't like what _I_ pretended to be during my time with Team Go. She might be a hero, but she doesn't save people just for the sake of saving people. I'm not even sure if she does it for herself. I feel like her body's a prison for her, and her mind is a wounded animal lashing out. I just happened to bear the brunt of it this time._

_As much as it galls me to admit it, I worry for her. One day, she'll snap, and it won't be pretty. On that day, I think I'm retiring. But until then, I think I'm due for a rather extended vacation. I'll let Drewbie percolate a bit in cellblock D._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>"Kimmie-cub! Your father brought home Chinese for lunch!" Anne Possible suddenly shouted from downstairs, shocking Kim so much that she let the purple leather diary slip from limp fingers and land face-down on her bed spread. "Come and get some if you want it!"<p>

Inhaling shakily, Kim called back a noncommittal reply, and ran an agitated hand down her face. She wasn't too surprised to find that her cheeks were damp.

Oh, she remembered that incident at Junior Prom. It was probably one of the worst experiences of her life. Eric had been… wonderful. Handsome, and caring, and he _listened_ when she spoke. She'd told him a lot of things she'd never said to anyone, and he hadn't laughed at her. He'd been supportive of every dream and desire she'd expressed.

It hurt more than one of Shego's plasma punches to the solar plexus when he'd betrayed her. When she realized that _everything_ was a _lie._ When she realized that for once in her life, she'd thought someone had actually cared about _her_, only for it to turn out that he was only distracting her from one of Drakken's plots. He didn't feel a thing for her. He wasn't even a _person_. And Shego… couldn't have known how that would have affected her. It was the first time that Kim had ever truly lost control over herself, and she wasn't proud of what she'd done to the other woman that night, nor of what she'd said. Though the majority of Shego's observations of her person were unsettlingly accurate, there was _one_ area in which she'd been wrong.

Kim had known very well that Shego had had no part in the whole 'Eric' part of the plan. She just hadn't cared. She'd wanted to hurt someone –_anyone_—and it was just the green woman's bad luck that she'd been in the way. In a way, Kim was very lucky that it was Shego who'd she'd kicked into that tower. Anyone else would have died after the electrocution she'd been given, and Kim would have been a killer. Kim was willing to bet that Shego had known that on some level, which is why she'd let her do it to her.

And Kim didn't know how she felt about that.

Still trembling slightly, Kim rearranged her face into a practiced smile and exited the room. Behind her, the little purple book still lay where it had fallen: an island of color on the crisp white of her blanket, and appearing for all the world just an innocent book as opposed to the thing that was slowly tearing Kim's final dredges of denial to pieces.

* * *

><p><em>AN: I can't even handle how weird it was trying to write this chapter. I do hope it turned out okay. __And yes, I'm aware that my timeline probably isn't the most accurate thing in the world. Sue me. I didn't want to look up specific dates._

_On another note, the next chapter is the chapter where the diary ends. (For now, at least.) Who's up for a little post-diary chaos?_


	6. Chapter 6: The End

_A/N: So sorry for the delay! Classes were really kicking my ass for a few days there, and then I had to fly across the country to see my cousin get married. (It was an adorable ceremony, just so you all know. They even had a jazz band at the reception!) And then I went home to spend Thanksgiving and my birthday with my parents._

_Happy Thanksgiving, by the way! I hope everyone gets lots of food and lots of love!_

_Thanks to everyone who left a review. They're so encouraging, and they inspire me to write! Lots of love to _zzzoo99, Magic Basher54986, MisterMagic25, Ponks, Firelord515, jim89, zax850, animegamemaster6, Banjoman38, Lhyaran, HairyLimey, ascended ancient, n255, Kigolicious, _and _Origin Unknown.

* * *

><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Six<br>The End

* * *

><p>Kim glared at the journal, and she could have sworn it glared back at her. Maybe it did. Maybe it had absorbed so much of Shego's snark and cynicism over the years that it had developed an attitude of its own. Kim had seen stranger things happen.<p>

She stood in the doorway of her bedroom, looking in. It had been torturous to go downstairs and have lunch with her family whilst pretending that her entire worldview wasn't being blown to pieces. And it was that damned book's entire fault. If Kim had just ignored it and returned it to its owner without reading it, she would still be able to look in the mirror and pretend that she was still going to pick a college and be either a brain surgeon or rocket scientist, and her parents would love her, and she'd marry a nice guy and have 2.5 kids and a dog and a white picket fence, and she'd stop missing drawing, and she'd be the hero that everyone wanted her to be and… and…

Kim stepped into her room, closed the door, leaned against it, and slowly slid to the floor. Her eyes never left the silver-embossed name of _Michelle Mae Govetsky_ that winked innocently back at her in the afternoon sunlight that streamed through her window.

_You know you can't do that, Kim,_ it seemingly whispered to her._ You're better than that._

And damn it all, Kim believed it.

She was leaving, she decided then and there. Kim Possible was going to disappear. Maybe forever. Ron was doing it. Why couldn't she? Wade could help her so that she'd never be found unless she wanted to be, she knew. She'd do it on Friday. That would give her time to set things up and say her goodbyes to the tweebs, who she did love dearly, even if they were obnoxious at times. The Dean of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago owed her a favor. Kim was sure he'd be able to admit a last-minute undergraduate student on short notice without too much trouble. Especially one that was a dear friend of Kim Possible.

But Kim was getting ahead of herself. First thing's first.

Finish that diary.

Courage once again mustered, Kim climbed back to her feet and lifted the little book like a priceless treasure, admiring the handwriting that was spread over the creamy pages. It had slowly evolved from a child's block lettering into an adult script that while far from flowing or calligraphic, was as elegant yet practical as the person who'd written it. Beautiful in its own way, even if the things it said weren't always what Kim wanted to hear.

But that's what made those words powerful.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today is June 11, 2007. I again neglected to write on my twenty-second birthday, but I have a better excuse this time._

_I was at Kimmie's house._

_FUBAR, is all I gotta say to that. Electronique –the idiot—broke out of jail and used the attitudinator on my brothers and I. The boys all ran off to cause some nice, healthy mayhem and I? Well, I transformed into a scarily saccharine-sweet STRAIGHT girl. Ugh. It was horrifying how helpless and giggly I was._

_I don't giggle._

_I actually really do owe Princess for taking me in, even if she looked a little freaked out about it whenever I did something too blatantly out of character. (See above giggling commentary.) In the state I was in, I was completely helpless. She might not have known it, but there are some people out there –heroes and villains alike—who would have gladly used the opportunity to _end_ me at my moment of weakness and still felt good about themselves in the morning. Hell, if Kimmie had half a brain, she would have done the same, but she didn't. She took care of me, even if she _did_ let me go on a date with Barkin. Ugh. Still, the _point_ is, she could have done any _number_ of things to me without any sort of resistance at all. Hell, she could have just let me live out the rest of my life as a miserable, simpering idiot! But… she didn't. She took me into her home and treated me like a friend, and defended me against not only Electronique and my brothers, but her own terrifying twin brothers and her parents, who are the most idiotically oblivious Doctors I've ever met (and I work as a villainous sidekick!) I'm still trying to make sense of that one. Really, they were weird, and _way_ too comfortable with Kimmie's lifestyle._

_All of that, and she once told me she hated me. She's got a funny way of showing it, if that's true._

_Thankfully, the buffoon managed to turn me back to normal, and I took off. (Though I did later enjoy a good laugh at the fact that my teaching credentials _did_ come in handy after all. So fuck you, haters.) It was business as usual for a while after that, but then Warmonga came back with a boyfriend. (Warmonga being the gigantic alien bitch that stole my look, _and_ my job. I make green look _so_ much better. Besides, she almost killed Kimmie. She's MY nemesis, damn it! But you wouldn't believe the flak I caught from Drakken for saving her little power-suited ass. Does _no one_ understand the etiquette of nemeses anymore? Honestly.)_

_So I got to play the hero again, after they abducted the blue moron and Miss Priss, and proceeded to trash the planet. And… we saved the world. It's scary how well Kimmie and I work together when we have to. What's scarier though, is what Stoppable can do when he's pissed._

_I never understood why Princess would settle for a buffoon, when she could clearly do much better. Now I know that the buffoon isn't quite so buffoonish as I'd thought, which is a little disturbing, actually. Now I get it. Don't know what that whole blue glow was, and I don't care. For saving the world though, Global Justice issued Drewbie and I a 'pardon' for our crimes._

_Of course, that was somewhat conditional as to whether or not we wanted to become their personal stooges for the rest of our lives. Dr. D didn't have much of a problem with it, and he seemed to be pretty happy about going to work for them. He even gave me a creepy plant-hug._

_Ugh again._

_But in a way, I'm sort of… happy for him. Drakken might be as annoying as all hell, but when I was his sidekick, he did try (for the most part) his best to take care of me, and he put up with a lot of shit from me that other supervillains might not have. He's the genius sort of moron, admittedly, but he's like a child in a way. He only ever wanted to be loved, and sure, that desire wasn't channeled in the most productive way, but he's got his chance now, and I'm glad he's taking it. The scientists at GJ will hopefully appreciate his input._

_As for me? Well… I'm not working for Global Justice. I've spent too much of my life answering to other people, and I'm never going back to answering to anyone but me, ever again. I know that means that I won't actually be 'pardoned', but I'm used to evading the cops. And if I wait it out long enough, the statutes of limitations for all those crimes will run through, and I'll be home free._

_I don't think I'm going back to Hench though. Stealing just… isn't fun anymore. Villainy gets repetitive after a while, and for the last few months, the only fun I've had has been fighting with Kimmie. I don't think I want to do that anymore either though. She deserves to live a life that doesn't revolve around stopping criminals (with no pay I might add) and with me out of the picture she might just have that chance. I owe her that much, at least, because I'm no idiot. Betty Director wouldn't have proposed the pardon at all if Kim hadn't pushed for it. She would have just offered us the choice between a job at Global Justice, or a nice venue for a lifetime performance of the Cell Block Tango._

_And… I think I'll take the chance to have a better life. I've quite a lot of money tucked away now. I'll never need to work again for my whole life. Not even my great-grandchildren will have to work. Once I've waited out my arrest window, I think I'll try to help people again. Not as a hero or as a villain, but as someone who is willing to take a stand and encourage others to do the same._

_I wish I could have said my goodbyes to Princess, and thanked her for what she's done for me even when she was up to her eyeballs in her own issues. I didn't want to risk it though, and I do feel a little bad about that. She's lost, and I hope she finds her way before the world chews her up and spits her out. The world isn't divided into 'good' and 'bad', but rather the 'haves' and 'have-nots'. Those who have power, and those who don't. I was raised as a 'have-not', while Miss Priss has been groomed as a hero by the 'haves'. And boy, do the 'haves' want Kimmie as their champion to help them keep their power. Betty was practically drooling over the kid. The sad part is that whatever side she chooses to fight for, the other side will lynch her without hesitation. Even though we're so different, Kim reminds me of me, and I hope that she can live with whatever side she chooses._

_Because I surely haven't been able to._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>This next entry, Kim noted, was the last one. After this, the pages were smooth and blank. Though she could read dates just as well as the next person, Kim's heart still pounded a little more quickly as she realized that after this last narrative, it was over. Frankly, Kim wasn't quite sure if she was relieved or devastated about that. It was a bittersweet occasion.<p>

Her curiosity was piqued though, by the fact that Shego's latest entry took place on the very day that Kim herself had last encountered her, and helped her flee the area. Kim wondered just what had made Shego leave.

* * *

><p>"<em>Dear Diary,<em>

_Today is July 23, 2007. I wrote quite recently, but I've just had a rather rattling experience. As the world puts itself back together after the Lorwardian invasion, I've been hiding out in my Chicago safe house. It's nothing fancy, but it's someplace where no one would think to look for me, and I can live peacefully. It's actually been kind of nice. I've been volunteering to help rebuild some of the destroyed buildings, and fixing up an old convertible I found into something that could accurately be described as 'sex on wheels'. Most shocking of all, it hasn't been as painfully boring as I thought it would be. Boring, yes, but not so much that I can't live with it._

_I suppose that this is just me learning the difference in doing things because I can, and doing things because I _want_ to._

_But this morning, all of that was sort of… shattered. Of all people, I encountered _Emma_. My first friend, and my first crush._

_I was walking to one of my favorite bagel stores for a late breakfast (Thank goodness it's not really anywhere close to my apartment.) when I saw red hair out of the corner of my eye, and someone doing a pretty good double-take when they recognized my profile._

_God save me, for an instant, I thought that Kimmie had somehow tracked me down for some reason. But it wasn't Kimmie. It was Emma. I hadn't seen her since the day where she told me that she never wanted to see me again, and I had no idea what to do. She looked like she was doing well, at least, and that sort of made me happy. When I looked at her, I just couldn't bring myself to see the girl who shattered my heart. I saw the girl who found me practicing tai chi in an alley and helped me with my forms._

_That, I suppose, was a mistake. Sue me. I'm going soft._

_We sort of just looked at each other for a moment before I walked over and asked if it was really her. She said yes, and then gave me a bitch slap that I'm actually kind of reluctantly proud of._

_She started yelling and crying at me in the middle of the street: calling me a criminal who abandoned her, and a liar, and a pervert. Honestly, I don't even remember exactly what she said, except that she seemed both blatantly homophobic and oddly betrayed that I never came back to see her, even after she told me not to. To be honest, she didn't seem entirely stable, mentally. I was just… weirdly calm though, at the time. I waited until she was done, told her that it was nice seeing her again, and just… walked away. I even got my bagel. (Jalapeno with melted cheddar.) I didn't freak out until I went home._

_I have to leave now, even though I wish I could stay. If Emma didn't call the police, someone else who heard her throwing a fit probably did, and it won't take them more than a few hours to figure out where I've been hiding._

_It's sad, that I have to leave. It's sad that Emma hates me so much. I don't hate _her_. I just don't understand her, and for some reason, I think that's okay. It takes a lot of energy to hate people, just as it takes a lot of energy to love people, and Emma isn't worth that. I'll always be grateful to her for teaching me both the good and bad sides of friendship. She taught me both love and heartbreak, and that's enough, I think. I won't waste any more of my emotions on her. She isn't important enough for that._

_I've spent all day rushing around to hide the evidence of my being here in the city, and I'm exhausted. I had to break into _way_ too many offices to destroy paperwork and security footage, and I only just got in to pack up what I want to take with me. I figured taking five minutes to write wouldn't hurt anything._

_Until next time, Diary._

_Love,_

_Shego"_

* * *

><p>And that was it. That was the end.<p>

Ever so carefully, Kim shut the diary and smoothed a hand over the soft leather of the cover, her fingers tracing over the letters that proudly announced _Michelle Mae Govetsky_. Shego. She'd always been aware of it on some level, but Kim took a moment now to simply appreciate the fact that Shego was an amazing woman. She'd been through a lot, and come through it kicking ass, and as a better person than anyone ever gave her credit for. Kim appreciated that. She respected that. And she was glad that she'd been good enough to be Shego's nemesis, and that Shego didn't hate her. It meant… a lot.

Kim couldn't say how long she sat on the bed, lost in thought. She was brought back to reality by the shrill beeping of her Kimmunicator.

"What's the sitch?"

From the little screen set into the device, the charming visage of her young friend Wade grinned up at her. "It's no big," he assured her. "Dr. Director wants to see you."

"Ride?" Kim responded somewhat tersely, pursing her lips in agitation. She hadn't forgotten her promise to Shego to do what she could to help her. Kim was going to keep that promise if it killed her, and she had a pretty big bone to pick with Betty Director.

Wade glanced at her concernedly. "It'll be there in five. Kim… is everything all right?"

"No," Kim admitted, smiling sadly. "But it will be. After I get back from GJ, we need to talk. Could you tell Ron to be at Bueno Nacho in a couple of hours?"

"Sure thing, Kim."

Kim grinned. "You rock, Wade."

And the call cut. Kim prepared herself for her talk with Dr. Director in silence. Quite deliberately, she donned the now familiar purple of her mission clothes. She needed to remind Betty who had been shouldering so much of GJ's work free of charge, and just how dangerous she could be if she put forth the effort. Carefully, she schooled her expression into her 'mission face' and kept it there to mask her emotions and convey her seriousness before bouncing lightly down the stairs and into the waiting GJ transport vehicle.

Within ten minutes, Kim found herself sitting across from Dr. Director in the older woman's office. The brunette was fixing her in a stern glare, as if she were a naughty child that needed scolding. Kim could tell from the glint in her eye, however, that her choice in dress and expression had done its job in throwing her off her game slightly. It wasn't Kim's usual attitude.

Kim resisted the urge to smirk. "You asked to see me, Dr. Director?" she said instead, with careful neutrality.

"I did," the head of Global Justice confirmed. "I would appreciate it if you would explain to me just why I have security footage of you helping Shego to escape justice in Chicago two nights ago, Ms. Possible."

"Easy. Shego needed help getting her stuff down to her car, and I helped her," Kim explained innocently. "I help people."

Dr. Director frowned. "Kim," she sighed. "Shego is a known felon."

"Actually, not anymore. She was given a full pardon," Kim reminded her. "Since she hasn't committed any crimes since then, that makes her just like anyone else who wants to move out of their own home."

At this point, Dr. Director seemed slightly uncomfortable, and rightly so in Kim's opinion. However, the woman hadn't made it to the top echelons of an organization like GJ for nothing, and she showed this skill now in neatly deflecting the conversation into a more advantageous direction.

"And just what were you doing at Shego's apartment, Ms. Possible?" she queried.

Kim just smiled beatifically. "I got a call that Shego was breaking into that apartment," she explained lightly. "Fortunately, it was all just a misunderstanding. It was Shego's property, and one of the neighbors simply didn't recognize her. Since I was there, I just decided to help out." She tilted her head to the side. "I don't understand what the problem is, Dr. Director. Is helping people wrong?"

"No, Kimberly. Helping people is never wrong," Dr. Director was quick to reassure her. For a moment, the room was quiet, and then her eye narrowed. "However, you and I _both_ know that you deliberately helped Shego to evade arrest by the local police force, and now I am asking you why."

Picking up on the change in mood, Kim dropped her innocent act and met Betty's stare with her own flinty gaze, dissatisfaction evident. "You lied to me, Dr. Director," she said simply. "I was told that both Dr. Lipsky and Shego received full pardons in exchange for their parts in saving the planet from the Lorwardians. Genuine second chances to escape a life of crime, if they so chose. I might be idealistic, Dr. Director, but I'm _not_ stupid. You never pulled the local warrants in effect for Shego like you did for Drakken. Yes, Shego didn't want to work for Global Justice, and yes, that might be a sign of a desire to continue henching, but did it ever occur to you that Shego might have wanted to just disappear? She's a proud woman, and by withholding a full pardon, you're only forcing her hand back into her old ways. No one will ever reform if you don't give them the chance to. And frankly, I thought GJ was better than that. I hoped that GJ was a place where I could be proud to work in the future. Was I wrong?" Kim delivered these words calmly and coolly, and she knew they would throw Dr. Director for a loop.

Though she generally preferred to handle people with as much honestly as possible, Kim was no stranger to manipulation. She knew exactly what Dr. Director wanted. She wanted Kim. Humility aside, Kim knew that she was good at what she did. Very good. Martial artists with her level of natural skill were one in a million finds, and paired with her rather impressive ability to think on her feet, Kim was Global Justice's wet dream when it came to the ideal agent. She had been more effective at the age of fifteen than half of GJ's top agents put together. Were the agency to bring her under their control, she would be an asset of incredible value. That being said, Kim was smart enough to use this fact against Dr. Director. Though Kim had no intention of ever working for Global Justice, it didn't mean that she couldn't _imply_ that she did.

And people accused her of being a bad liar. Ha! The best liars are those who you'd never suspect of lying. And Kim Possible never lied. So far as Betty knew, Kim was deadly serious with each word that came out of her mouth.

Kim was feeling more than a little smug, though only behind the safety of her mask of determination.

As for Dr. Director… well, she was quietly grinding her teeth. "Shego is a very dangerous woman, Kimberly," she explained. "We thought it best to keep her under control. Our experts deemed it unlikely that she would actually change her ways."

Kim tilted her head to one side. "So you decided to go back on your word before she could do the same to you?" she queried. "I'm no expert, Dr. Director, but I don't see how that encourages a dangerous woman to become less dangerous, instead of more so. Not to mention how the sitch is ferociously unethical."

"Kimberly—"

"Out of any operative you have access too, _I_ have had the most contact with Shego," Kim interrupted firmly. "And as your only Shego expert, I _highly _recommend that you issue that pardon and pull those warrants. There's no telling how much longer Shego will stay tolerant of the local cops chasing her down."

The brunette across from her didn't look too happy, but Kim was well aware that she had little choice now but to bend to Kim's will if she wanted to save face. "If that is your official recommendation, I'll see that it's done," the one-eyed leader of GJ finally surrendered with a light sigh. "Just know that I do this out of personal confidence in you, Kimberly. You might not get another chance if this goes south."

Kim simply nodded her head. "Thank you, Dr. Director," she said sincerely, choosing not push her luck farther. "Was there anything else I can do for you?"

Dr. Director shook her head. "Aside from reiterating my earlier offer of a place in the agency, there's nothing left to discuss."

"Thank you for the offer, but I'd rather consider it after I finish my education, Dr. Director, as I've said before. I think I'd be a better agent that way," Kim said sweetly, her winsome smile fixed back onto her face.

The one-eyed brunette just nodded and waved her from the room. Kim acquiesced without a fuss and began making her way out of the facility, walking at a brisk pace. With any luck, that would be the last time she'd ever be in that office.

But for now, Kim couldn't dwell on that. She had a date with a naco, and a letter to write.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Up next, Kim's response to all of this!_


	7. Chapter 7: So Long, Farewell

_A/N: This chapter's a short one, but it's just wrapping up the loose ends so we can hit the next part of the story. The part with the action in it! And just as a tiny spoiler, we'll be seeing Shego again next chapter!_

_Thanks to _zax850, Ponks, Aschen _(Sorry about that, but my muse is on strike for LOTR right now. She's an unreasonable sort.)_, zzzoo99, MisterMagic25, n255, levi97100, Kigolicious _(Did I ever tell you that I love your pen name? Cause I do.)_, jim89, Lhyaran, FallenEcho, farfrom7, _and _Magic Basher54986.

* * *

><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Seven<br>So Long, Farewell

* * *

><p>Kim stood with Wade in the airport, just in front of the security checkpoint. They had their arms wrapped around each other, and the younger boy was crying softly into her stomach.<p>

"Don't forget to use the stop in Albuquerque to change your disguise, Kim," he babbled. "Remember to angle your face away from security cameras and buy new luggage. I'll have your boxes shipped to your new place with Leah in about three business days, so you don't have to worry about that. And I put a kimmunicator app on your new phone for secure calls to Ron and I, but don't forget that it's disguised as an English to French translator, and that you've got to clear a room of cameras or bugs before you use it. And—"

"Wade," she cut him off gently. "I'll be fine."

He fell silent, and simply looked up at her with sad eyes.

"You're a great friend," she told him, "and I wouldn't have been able to do this without you. So thank you. It means a lot, and I know it means a lot to Ron too. Do you promise to call if you need me?"

Releasing her, Wade nodded. "I promise," he said softly.

Kim grinned at him. She was touched that the child genius had emerged from his room to come and see her off. Ron had left the day before, and he'd come to see him then, too. Kim and Wade both hoped that Yamanouchi would be good for their friend, who would be attending a culinary school on the side of his ninja training.

As for Kim? Well, she was disappearing. She'd had Wade keep the website up and running for absolute emergencies, such as alien invasions, but unless such a thing occurred, Kim Possible was officially out of commission.

It had been a hard decision to make, and harder still to go through with. Kim had a lot of regrets, but truly, she thought that this was for the best. She was going to be free. She'd miss Middleton, and Monique, and the tweebs, but she knew that they understood why she was leaving, and they promised to send her emails through Wade, the only person who knew who and where her new identity was.

Well, perhaps not the _only _person.

With a sad smile, Kim slung the blue backpack she was carrying off her shoulder and handed it to wade with the utmost care. "Wade, I need just one more favor from you," she told him solemnly.

"Anything," he promised, accepting the bag and weighing it curiously in his hands.

Kim reached out and squeezed the boy's broadening shoulder, looking him dead in the eyes. "I need you to deliver that bag to Shego, Wade, and I want you to promise me that you won't open it."

The unusual request clearly threw Wade off his game, if his slightly bulging eyes were anything to judge by. "Shego?" he blurted, obviously floored. "Why?"

"I owe her," Kim said simply. "I owe her more than I can probably ever repay. What's in the bag is something like an apology and a down payment wrapped into one. Promise me you'll get it to her safely, Wade. Please."

Wade swallowed. "I… I promise."

Kim practically wilted in relief. "You rock, Wade," she said fervently, before hoisting her small carryon suitcase into her hand and winking at him. "I'll see you around Wade, yeah?"

"Yeah."

And Kim was gone. Pushing her way through the airport to get to her gate was an absolute nightmare, as was the boarding, but once the plane took off, Kim was able to relax into a quieter state of being. As she did so, she thought upon the blue backpack that she'd given to Wade to somehow deliver to Shego.

It was a stupid idea, really, but Kim didn't think that it was right for her to keep the woman's diary. Nor did she think it was right for her to return it without at least an apology for reading it because, frankly, Kim was extremely, one hundred percent sure that Shego would know she'd done so the moment she had it back in her rather dangerous hands. For the first few days after reading it, Kim hadn't been quite sure what to do about this problem, and she'd waffled back and forth between a few less-than-stellar solutions before she'd stumbled across the answer whilst packing her room up.

Her black notebook.

Kim didn't keep a diary. Not a real one, anyways. (She'd kept one for a while that outlined the thoughts she 'should' have. It helped her to remember what she was supposed to think and be on especially rough days.) Instead, she'd taken to using her secret pencil sketching as a way to chronicle her life. In the end, it was the only way that she was able to express herself without any form of censorship. The sketchpad she used was a simple black spiral of sketch paper of moderate quality, which she kept tucked away under her mattress. Inside, she had illustrated her life from its brightest moments to its most sordid lows. A lot of those pictures weren't flattering, and some were downright condemning, but Kim felt that her black notebook was a true expression of herself.

As Kim held the black notebook in her hands, contemplating on how best to destroy it (She couldn't take such a blatant memento of Kim Possible with her in her new life, and she didn't dare leave it where anyone could look at it.) she was suddenly struck by the concept of quid pro quo, and she knew she'd found her solution.

The blue backpack that Kim had given to Wade contained three things. First and foremost, it held the diary of Michelle Mae Govetsky, which Kim had guarded zealously while it was in her care. Secondly, it held Kim's black notebook, tied neatly shut with a black silk ribbon. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it held a letter that Kim had written to her ex-nemesis.

It was probably the most difficult letter she'd ever written. She'd agonized over its wording for days before simply going with the first draft. It was, Kim decided, the most honest. She'd read it over so many times that she could probably recite the whole thing from memory. As a way to relieve her boredom, Kim shut her eyes and did so silently, imagining the words in her loopy handwriting scrolling before her eyes.

* * *

><p>"<em>Shego,<em>

_I suppose by now, you've probably figured out why exactly I'm writing this letter, considering that I'm returning your diary to you. All I can really ask of you is to read what I have to say. I promise you now, though, that the only person who ever read your diary was me. I never let it out of my sight for a moment after I realized just whose it was. (And on the topic of promises, you should probably know, if you don't already, that you should no longer have any outstanding warrants anywhere, no matter the level of jurisdiction. You're free. I promised you that I'd do what I could, so Dr. Director and I had a lovely little chat ended in me getting what I wanted, which was your full and _unconditional_ pardon. You should have seen Betty's face! It was utterly priceless.)_

_There are a lot of things that I feel like I should probably say to you. Like, that I should probably apologize for invading your privacy. But I'm not in the habit of lying to you (even if I'm a surprisingly good liar) so I can't tell you that I'm sorry for what I did. Instead, I'm going to tell you that you gave me the kick in the ass that I needed to do what I had to do, just like you've always done for me. So really, I should be thanking you._

_I wrote to you for several reasons. One of which is to let you know that by the time you read this, Kim Possible will be gone for the foreseeable future. I think I'll miss saving the world, but it's time for me to be the person that I want to be, and not who I think everyone else wants. You were right about me, Shego. (And doesn't that taste bitter?) My nearly every waking moment was a production and a fantasy in an effort to earn something that will never be given to me, and I couldn't continue living like that. I needed to grow up._

_The return address on this envelope is the address of my new identity. I'd thank you not to bandy it about. It's for you to know, and you alone, because if you want to beat the crap out of me for what I've done, I'm not going to stop you. Inside the backpack, besides your diary, you'll also find a black notebook. That's something I'll also thank you not to show around. I don't keep a diary, but I have other, more 'plebeian' was of expressing myself that have never been approved of in my household. In your hands, you hold the one act of rebellion that Kim Possible ever committed, and the only evidence of the person I really am beneath the do-gooder teen hero. I was planning to burn it before I left, because as you'll see that for obvious reasons, I could never take it with me. But then I thought that while I can probably never make it up to you, I could at least offer you the same opportunity I had. Sure, a sketchbook sent in a backpack isn't the same as a diary falling out of an open box, but it's the best I can do. As scarily accurate as you were with your analysis of my character, I doubt much in it will surprise you, and I suppose that's why I trust you with seeing it._

_And if I so much catch a whiff of some smartass remark about me going soft, I'll haunt you in your sleep, Shego. Trust me, I'll know. I'll sense the disturbance in the force._

_And, if I never see you again… good luck, Shego. With whatever you decide to do with your life. I owe you._

_Yours,_

_Kimmie"_

* * *

><p>The worst bit, Kim decided, was not knowing how Shego would react to such a letter. She meant what she'd said in the letter though. If one day Shego appeared in her apartment and threw the first punch, Kim would let her fry her into beef jerky. Somehow, though, Kim didn't think that that's how Shego would react. Had she gone to her in person instead of sending a letter, maybe, but with time to cool down, Kim thought it was rather more likely that she would simply never hear from Shego again. It was a sobering thought, considering that the other woman had been such a big part of her life for so long, but it truly was the most likely scenario. And as odd as it sounded… Kim was okay with that. She'd miss Shego in her own masochistic sort of way, but it would be enough to see from afar that the other woman was happy. It was something Kim could live with.<p>

With a sigh, Kim snuggled deeper into the uncomfortable chair she was seated in and tried to ignore the older man snoring on one side of her and the kid playing Grand Theft Auto on his PSP on the other.

When this flight landed in Albuquerque, Kim Possible as the world knew her would cease to exist, and another woman would rise in her place and fly to Chicago to pursue a double major in Drawing and Martial Arts. Kim thought it would be wise for her to take this time now to say goodbye to who she used to be and open herself up to living how _she_ wanted to.

They'd be looking for her soon, she knew. Global Justice, followed by her parents, who would be none too eager to lose their most famous child. None of them would find her, thanks to Wade. They wouldn't find Wade either, nor Ron. Monique would be easily found, as she was attending Go University for a degree in fashion design, but Kim knew that her best female friend was one tough cookie. The GJ goons wouldn't intimidate her at all.

And Kim? Kim would be free, testing her wings and flying for the first time.

It was going to be wonderful.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Listen here, people! This chapter right here is an important division. Next time you tune in, quite a bit of time will have passed. So hang on to your panties, all right?_

_Was anyone else singing 'So Long, Farewell' in their heads while reading this? Because if you were, you were totally on my (somewhat insane) level. Kudos, bro._


	8. Chapter 8: Awkward

_A/N: Okay. So this is important. We've just made a bit of a time-jump in the story, as you'll see. The space between chapter seven and chapter eight is two years. Kim's been in hiding for two years. A lot can change in that time, so please don't freak out if Kim's established character seems different. It's intentional. She's grown up now and found her zen, yeah? And as for Shego... well, it's been two years for her too, and I'm not telling you what she's been up to yet, but she's done some growing as well._

_But seriously, don't freak out. Everyone's a big kid now._

_Thanks to _MisterMagic25, Firelord515, jim89, AnonD, levi97100, only-looking _(You're going to make me blush if you keep sweet-talking me like that!), _zzzoo99, zax850, Magic Basher54986, Ponks, Lhyaran, _and_ Zepherus.

* * *

><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Eight<br>Awkward

* * *

><p>When the knock came at the door, Kat nearly didn't hear it. Her sound system was cranked up on high, blasting Fergie's 'London Bridge' throughout her small apartment. She was singing along and dancing as best she could as she worked on her latest class project, dressed only in a black sports bra, a pair of cut-off jean shorts, and a truly impressive amount of paint. She'd opted to attack the canvas sans brushes, this time. In a strange sort of way, Kat felt more physically connected to the art like this, as if a paintbrush was less a tool and simply a barrier between herself and the color that she was shaping into being with loving hands. It was an artist's sentimentality, and her coat of body paint combined with her odd half-dancing movements in all honesty just made her look bizarre.<p>

Thankfully, Kat's roommate, Leah, wasn't in. She would've laughed.

_KnockknockknockKNOCK._

"Coming!" Kat shouted over the bass, swiping her hands semi-dry on the back of her shorts and prancing out of the spartan living room towards the front door. She and Leah lived off-campus in a rather nice two-bedroom apartment that was definitely outside the normal means of most college students. Fortunately for Kat, Leah's father was a very rich man who owed one Kim Possible a favor. He worried for his only daughter Leah going off to college by herself, and so was simply delighted to have Kat live as Leah's roommate free of charge, on the condition that Kat looked out for his daughter. Kat counted her blessings every day for having such a lucky break.

That being said, Kat didn't get many visits from the neighbors, who were generally middle-aged to elderly and really wanted nothing to with the boisterous undergrad. If someone knocked on her door, it was either one of her friends (who generally called first), someone delivering food (but Kat hadn't ordered anything tonight), or Jonathon, the only other college student in the building, who lived a floor below her. It was almost nine, which was a little late for him to be coming up to see her, but Kat didn't think much on it. She genuinely liked Jonathon, as he had proved to be a good-natured friend, and she was in an absolutely fantastic mood at the moment.

Sure enough, when she threw open the door, Jonathon was the one who was standing in front of it with his fist raised to knock. "Hey Kitty!" he greeted her with a wide smile.

"Jonathon!" Kat squealed before grabbing the man by the collar and yanking him inside. "Dance with me!"

Laughing, he obliged, gripping Kat by her waist and swinging and twirling her bodily around him to the beat of the song while she laughed rather breathlessly. Jonathon, at well over six and a half feet tall, was something of a gentle giant, and Kat didn't fear him dropping her comparatively slight weight. This was custom for them whenever she had music playing in the apartment. By this point, Jonathon even knew where best to touch her so that he didn't get completely covered in graphite, charcoal dust, or whatever color of paint Kat happened to be using prior to his arrival. (What could she say? She was a messy artist.) When the song ended, Kat dipped herself dramatically as if she were dancing a tango, her spine arcing backwards, before springing upright again and punching down the volume on the music with the stereo remote.

"It's a bit late, Jonathon," she commented, face flushed red from being upside-down. "_Please_ tell me you brought pizza if you want me to stay awake and watch Battlestar Galactica again."

The dark-haired man released a faux-offended huff of breath and pressed his fist against his heart. "Oh Kitty, you wound me so!" he proclaimed, shaking his head. "Sometimes I think you only love me for the pizza." Kat opened her mouth, eyes sparkling mischievously, to deliver a snappy retort, but Jonathon cut her off with a raised hand. "I'm taking Ashley out on a date tonight, remember?"

Kat snapped her fingers. "Oh, I see! Advice! Well if you use your tongue to stroke really, really lightly right behind her—"

A large hand clapped over her smirking mouth before things could get too inappropriate. "Stop! My innocence!" Jonathon wailed. "I know you and Ashley hooked up once but I _don't _need to hear about it!"

Kat licked his hand, which he hastily withdrew, whining about germs, and the woman pouted slightly at him. "Well, if you don't want me to tell you how to get a second date, why are you here?"

"I ran into your friend Mary down in the lobby. She looked a little lost, so I walked her up here for you," Jonathon said somewhat sheepishly as he realized he'd totally forgotten about said friend, who he'd left in the doorway, and turned to give the woman an apologetic glance.

Frowning, Kat followed his line of sight, somewhat confused. She didn't know a Mary. This thought stuttered to a grinding halt halfway through production, however, when she caught a good look at the vision in her doorway. 'Mary' was an inch or so taller than Kat herself was, and slightly curvier. What truly caught and held Kat's astonished attention, however, were her more… distinctive features. Beautiful waist-length dark hair, stunning green eyes, and a pallid skin tone that seemed almost green in the right light.

Shego stood tensely in her doorway, dressed casually in a dark green tunic top, black leggings, and a pair of lace-up combat boots. She appeared more than a little stunned herself though, her slanted eyes wide and her lips –still colored with her trademark black lipstick—parted slightly.

"Princess," she breathed. "Is that you?"

Kat didn't blame Shego for her confusion. After all, she didn't look much like Kim Possible anymore. Kimberly Anne Possible had been the perfect all-American teen. Katherine Antigone Phillips was an art student. (Enough said.)

It wouldn't do for Kat to be recognized on the street as Kim, now would it?

Kat Phillips was a very interesting girl to look at. Her body type was still the same as it always had been: lean, muscled, and graceful in motion. Aside from that, however, there wasn't a whole lot of similarity between who she was now and who she used to be. Most obviously different was her trademarked copper-red hair, which had been cropped to chin-length, streaked liberally with neon blue, and spiked into a wild, gravity-defying mess halfway reminiscent of Medusa—if the Gorgon had gotten herself electrocuted. Her eyes were different too –turned a sharp blue by tinted contacts—and they glittered alongside the diamond stud in the side of her nose and the silver hoops lined up along the cartilage of her ears. She even had a tattoo; an intricate celtic trinity centered over her left hipbone that spiraled out into blooming sunflowers, clearly visible in her shirtless state. Kat was twenty years old now, and her face had lost some of its previous baby roundness. But her new face had something that her old face had lacked.

It was the glow of true happiness.

No, Kat didn't look much like Kim Possible at all.

It didn't mean that it wasn't her name though.

Frantically attempting to jump-start her brain, Kat finally succeeded in un-freezing herself and shot Shego a shy smile. "That's my name, don't wear it out," she chirped. It was a weak line, but the best she could come up with on short notice.

Thankfully, Shego still hadn't quite recovered from her own shock, and wasn't quite able to seize upon the mocking window. The tension strung taut between them, however, was an almost tangible thing.

Jonathon shuffled his feet rather awkwardly. "Date. Ashley. I'm just gonna _go_ now," he muttered, before slipping past Shego's stiff form and practically running down the hall.

Hell no was he going to get involved with that baggage.

Kat –no, _Kim_—blinked rapidly for a moment. "Come in, Shego," she finally decided upon, gesturing off to the side where the kitchen was. Thankfully, the older woman agreed without protest and sauntered off in the indicated direction. Kim carefully closed the door into the hall and followed, gazing at her once-nemesis while her back was turned. In the nearly two years since they'd last seen each other, Shego hadn't changed a bit, which was a little surreal for Kim, who'd changed quite a lot: some by choice, and some by necessity. She supposed that she was still Kim, but she'd been trying to think of herself as Kat for a while now, and it was just _strange_ to so suddenly go back to Kim again.

The apartment's kitchen wasn't very big, but it did have a lovely breakfast nook by a window that now sported a charming view of the downtown nightscape. It was at the little table here that Kim gestured for Shego to sit before turning around and rummaging through the fridge.

"Water? Soda? Beer? Jack?" she called out, voice somewhat muffled from speaking inside of the box.

Kim heard a slight squeak as Shego shifted in her chair. "Beer," she said shortly.

Kim tossed a can behind her without looking, and grinned to herself as she heard the sharp slap of metal on flesh as Shego caught it in her bare hand with reflexes that apparently hadn't dulled since they'd last seen each other. She grabbed a can for herself, popped the tab, and fell gracefully into the chair opposite of her guest, who was already in the process of sipping at her chosen beverage. She was staring at her with rather alarming intensity, to which Kim raised a challenging eyebrow in return. "Have I got something on my face?" she snarked, smirking a little.

"Yes, actually," Shego shot back without missing a beat. "And the rest of you too. Mauled by a unicorn, were you?"

Kim brushed some imaginary dust off one shoulder. "All in a day's work," she boasted.

"You're an idiot," Shego sighed, rolling her eyes.

Leaning back in her chair as if it were a lounger, Kim winked. "No, I'm hilarious," she corrected, tipping her beer can in a sort of salute. "You just haven't realized it yet."

Shego sneered at her. "Are you even old enough to be drinking that?"

"Nope. You gonna tattle on me, Shego?" the redhead shot back. Her tone was light, but her eyes were very, very serious._ Will you tell Global Justice where I am, Shego? You know they're looking for me. Will you sell me out?_

The silence between them grew as each held the other's gaze, trying to read each other as they had so often done in the past. Shego was the first to look away.

"No," she murmured. "I won't."

Kim visibly relaxed, and the sharpness in her gaze lessened. She took another sip of her beer, resisting the urge to wrinkle her nose at the bitter flavor. She generally thought that beer tasted like piss water, and preferred wine, but it tended to be more expensive than she was willing to buy on her current budget. "Why did you come here, Shego?" she asked softly. And truly, she was curious. Shego was a master at presenting a falsely indifferent front, but her body held a rigidity that belied this. She was extremely uncomfortable at the moment, though Kim could only guess at Shego's reasons for behaving civilly at the moment.

Shego frowned into her own beverage and crossed her legs. "I… don't know," she admitted after a poignant pause. "I didn't really plan this out. I was driving into town and I saw the name of your street, so I just… came in. I probably wouldn't have come up if your friend hadn't asked what room number I was looking for."

Nodding in acknowledgement of this statement, Kim watched the woman closely. Shego seemed… different. Not softer, per say, but definitely less harsh. Amusedly, Kim thought that she must have mellowed with age. Seeing that her old enemy seemed to be waiting for some sort of response, however, Kim's eyes darted towards the open doorway to the living room. "In that case, would you mind if I finished my project? I'm almost done."

"Like I care," Shego shot back with her patented bored expression. Kim half expected her to produce an emery board and set to work on her admittedly shapely nails.

Kim just smiled at her cheerfully and bounced from her seat, restoring her music with the remote before diving back into her paints. Though she couldn't hear her movements, Kim was quite certain that Shego had risen from her own chair to follow her, but Kim didn't really care. Leah liked to watch her paint too, so she wasn't unaccustomed to an audience.

Her painting class was in the middle of an abstract unit. Kim's professor was a bit of a free spirit and a hippie, dreadlocks and all, and he often assigned work that had a strong basis in emotion. This particular assignment was to portray a specific feeling through abstract shapes and colors. It wasn't Kim's usual fare, but she found that she was enjoying the challenge. She'd chosen to depict the focus, calm, and aggression that she channeled every time she practiced her fighting. The center of her canvas was dominated by an amorphous cluster of rigid, intersecting lines in varying shades of red and orange. She surrounded this fiery core with lazy swirls of grey, like the fog that rolled in over the ocean in the early hours of the morning. Slow, and calm. This was the part she was finishing now, using languid twists of her wrists and fingertips to attain the proper shape as she hummed along to the music and slowly started dancing in place again.

What could she say? She was in the zone.

Ten minutes later and once again thoroughly covered with paint, Kim stood back from where she'd laid the canvas out on the floor and examined it for flaws from a distance, the newspaper she'd laid out to protect the floor crinkling beneath her bare feet. She tensed in surprise when Shego spoke from right behind her. She hadn't forgotten that she was there, but she definitely hadn't expected her to comment; or to have stepped into the room at all, for that matter.

"Pretty good, Princess. I just hope you know how completely ridiculous you looked while doing it," she drawled, smirking victoriously when Kim whirled to face her.

Kim pouted. "Shego, words hurt!" she complained in her best impression of Dr. Drakken.

Much to the redhead's surprise and delight, Shego actually laughed at her.

"You'll bounce back," her critic responded with a lazy wave of a surprisingly delicately-formed hand, crossing her arms and adjusting her stance so that she looked more at ease than she had the whole night before adding dryly, "That is, if my oh-so-damaging words are even capable of penetrating your protective paint layer."

"It's not that bad!" Kim protested.

Shego arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow. "You have gray paint in your hair. And on your nose. And your arms and legs. And you have red handprints on your ass."

"It's no big. I've had worse. Art is war, you know," Kim stated piously before shaking out her spiky hair and moving her finished painting off to one side so she could clean up her work area.

For a while, Shego simply watched Kim with an inscrutable expression as she flounced around the room doing her best not to appear as nervous as she felt. "I didn't know you painted," she finally said, breaking the silence that had ensued after Kim had turned off the music again.

"I didn't, until recently," Kim explained, voice raised over the crackling of the paint-soaked newspaper that she was gathering into her arms to throw away, heedless of the new splotches of color appearing on her body. "I'd never taken an art class in my life until I started classes here. The last time we saw each other, the only thing I could really do was draw. I still prefer pencils, but sometimes paint makes for a nice change of pace."

They fell into quiet again, which swiftly became rather awkward when Kim finished her small cleaning spree and simply stood in front of her guest with an eyebrow quirked in question.

"I brought them back, you know," Shego suddenly blurted, staring fixedly at her now empty can of beer as if it was the most interesting thing on the planet. "The drawings that you sent to me. I didn't know if you wanted them back."

Not having expected such a statement, Kim blinked in surprise, before a slow smile stole over her lips. "Really?"

"Doy. I wouldn't have said so otherwise." The reply was accompanied by an exasperated eye roll.

Kim just grinned impishly at Shego's attempt at emotional distancing, glad that some things, at least, hadn't changed. Shego would always avoid awkward conversations through mocking.

"Do you have them with you?" she asked instead of commenting. "I'd like to see them again."

Hesitantly, the dark-haired woman nodded. "They're in my bag," she said, gesticulating towards the kitchen. I'll just… bring them in here," she added when Kim threw herself bodily onto the sofa (which was thankfully protected from her paint-splattered body by an old sheet that had been thrown over its back.) and looked up at her expectantly.

If someone had told Kim that morning that Shego would show up at her door unannounced that very night and they'd be sitting together on the couch looking through her old drawings not an hour later, she probably would have slapped them silly. Still, this was where she found herself. The black notebook that she'd once sent to Shego in the blue backpack with her letter and the diary lay open across their laps as Kim slowly flicked through it, cringing at the beginner's mistakes in the earlier art, pointing out her favorite scenes, and answering the questions that Shego peppered her with regarding the more obscure or disturbing images. Kim found herself explaining quite a few things about her life that she'd never explained to anyone before, but she didn't dare stop or hold back.

After all, she was still waiting for Shego to light up and fry her. It was a total Scheherazade move, but Kim wasn't about to argue the strategy's effectiveness. She knew how to handle an angry Shego, and even a playful one, but a calm Shego was a whole different ball game and it made her nervous. Especially in the face of the fact that it appeared the woman was genuinely curious about her life.

Kim talked about her parents and their attitudes towards her, and her attempts to please them. She talked about her love of beautiful things, and her efforts to chronicle them in secret. She talked about Ron and Wade and Monique, and what they'd meant to her during those days in her life, and she talked about martial arts, and the lengths she'd gone to teach herself how to fight. She spoke of her life _now_, too, and how glad she was that she'd left those things behind so that she could simply be herself without fear of judgment.

Kim's sketchbook depicted people more often than they did landscapes. Present were quite a few portraits of the people in her life depicted as she saw them, which were Kim's personal favorites. She'd captured the sadness in Ron's eyes, and the vacancy in her parents'. She'd shown the age in Wade's young face, and even the fierce joy that Shego herself showed while they were fighting. Kim wasn't one for self-portraits, but she did quite a few first-person perspectives that included her hands at the periphery of the scenes, which Shego proclaimed to be her favorites for their realistic qualities. The first showed Kim's hands pulling aside a tree branch as an oblivious Ron practiced his katas in perceived privacy, his form more perfect than it had ever been on a mission. The second showed her hands splayed out across the ground as Shego, who stood off to one side in half-melted cuffs displaying all the righteous rage of an avenging angel, blasted the large form of Warmonga off her feet from above her. In the last, her hands were relaxed limply on the desk in her bedroom, wrists bloodied and mangled, presumably by the kitchen knife resting innocently between them.

Kim didn't like looking at that last drawing very much, but predictably, it was the one drawing that Shego seemed to ask the most questions about.

"Did you really do this to yourself?" Shego asked quietly when they reached that particular scene. Her expression was neutral, but her eyes were angry, and Kim knew she'd been dwelling on the idea for quite a while.

Kim just smiled sadly at her, a small bubble of shame welling up within her. "I was seventeen," she admitted, shocking herself slightly with how many words seemed to want to pour out of her. "I did that two nights after… after I kicked you into that tower. I know I told you I hated you that night, but the person who I really hated was myself; and you just happened to be a convenient way to pretend that I didn't. I had a lot of issues regarding my right to exist back then, considering that I'd been living my life trying to be something more than my parents' defective child. That whole sitch with Eric was… not good for my mental health, and I'd just gotten the call that the doctors still weren't sure if you would live. I thought I was both worthless _and_ a murderer, and after having caged myself up for so many years because I thought that who I am wasn't good enough…" Kim trailed off with a shrug. "I thought that I'd never be able to earn the right to live, and decided to simply save the world the trouble of taking that life away from me. I was in a rather selfish, pathetic, self-destructive place, then. Ron found me and stopped it before I lost much blood though. He always _did_ know when I was close to breaking, and after that I… never tried anything like that again."

As for her part, Shego was gazing at her as if she'd never seen her before, seemingly horror-struck. "I never knew, Kimmie," she murmured, bright emerald eyes flickering back and forth over her face, seemingly committing her features to memory.

"You weren't meant to," Kim said firmly, reaching out without thinking and brushing her fingertips over the woman's knee in a comforting gesture, a part of her going into some sort of mild shock over the fact that she was here, on her couch, talking to _Shego_ about this. And there was no plasma involved. "Ron was the only one who did, and we didn't talk about it ever again after that night. I was young and stupid, but we all have low points in our lives that we need to climb out of, Shego. The only person who could have helped me then was _me_. It just took a while for me to get around to it, is all."

Shego still appeared somewhat skeptical, but Kim spoke again before she could say anything, sensing an opening for the topic they'd been avoiding to be introduced and opting to take it. "Do you remember when we last saw each other, Shego?"

After shooting Kim a scathing look that just screamed '_Doy!'_ Shego apparently opted to answer without too much fuss. "I do. My old apartment's not a fifteen minute drive from here, actually."

Kim nodded absently. "At that time," she began, not quite sure why she was telling Shego this when she'd never said it aloud before, but willing to just roll with it, "I was getting _very_ close to snapping again. The Kim Possible that I was trying to be was created for high school, and I had no idea how I was going to translate that into adult life without losing my mind. I was barely holding it together as it was," she mused. "I wasn't sure if I was going to try and keep going, cut and run, or try the knife again. Honestly, when I went after you that night, I was just looking forward to fighting someone that could take a hit and distract me from making that decision, but instead, I ended up helping you get away and finding the diary you dropped in the parking lot. I didn't know whose it was, at first, and my curiosity got the better of me and I started reading. By the time I figured it out… I didn't want to stop. It was wrong of me, but I kept going anyways."

Kim flashed Shego a wan smile. The other woman was just watching her unwaveringly, her face a blank mask.

"I suppose it surprised me," Kim plowed on, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the back of the couch. "I always knew that you and I were a lot alike, but I consciously tried not to think about it most of the time. I wasn't ready for… reading your thoughts to make me feel… less lonely I guess. But I really needed that desperately then. More so than I realized at the time. The fact that you looked at me and saw _me_ instead of what I wanted you to see made me think about what I was doing a whole different way. I thought that if _you_ could see something in me that was worth saving, then maybe I owed it to myself to try and see the same thing. I'd decided to disappear before I even finished reading, and after making my last play at Global Justice, I had Wade arrange for Kim Possible to vanish for as long as I wanted her to."

Kim opened her eyes and trapped a still-frozen Shego in her bright blue stare, though she didn't move from her lounging pose on the couch. "That's why I sent the bag, and the letter, Shego," she confessed. "Even if you didn't do it intentionally, you were there when I needed you, and I owed it to you to try and make amends in any way I could, even if that meant you showing up and kicking my ass into the next century. I'll never regret doing what I did, but I do regret that I probably hurt you in the process. One day, do you think you can forgive me?"

From the stunned expression on her guest's face, Kim concluded that she'd most likely short-circuited Shego's brain, and Kim wasn't truly surprised. It had been a heavy –if rather one-sided—conversation. This in mind, the redhead decided to take mercy on the other woman and stood, tossing her blue streaked hair back into shape after resting the back of her head against the couch cushion.

"Where are you staying?" she asked abruptly.

It took a few moments for Shego to process the question, and then to respond. "I was going to check into a resort downtown. Why?"

"Stay here," Kim said simply, as if Shego's response didn't mean a lot to her. "I'll sleep on the couch for the night, and we can go to the dojo and spar in the morning. I haven't had a challenge in ages. We can talk after that, if you still want to, but right now, I think it'd be best if we called it a night."

A pause as Shego considered the offer. "Fine," she agreed. "But you're buying me lunch wherever we talk. A nice lunch. If you take me to Denny's or something I swear to God you won't be able to sit for three weeks."

Yep, it was definitely borderline masochistic for Kim to have missed this, but she had regardless. She couldn't quite suppress the radiant smile that bloomed on her face in response to the thought. Shego might be a bit of a jerk, Kim decided, but she was _her_ jerk.

"Your wish is my command, Oh Great One," Kim teased, holding up her hands in mock surrender.

And that was that.

Later that night, as Kim lay curled up on the couch, she thought about the woman who was currently using her bed. Shego was a remarkable woman, and somehow, Kim thought that she always would be. Kim had always respected her, and she still did, but knowing exactly how she had begun –as little Shelly-Mae—added a new dimension to the feeling that Kim couldn't quite put a name to, and she couldn't help but hope that Shego could one day learn to accept and appreciate the part of her that was Kat just as Kim had learned to do the same for Shelly.

If she could, there might just be hope for them to make peace with each other yet, and that thought kept Kim smiling even in dreams.

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><p><em>AN: Poor girls don't even know what to do with each other anymore! Don't worry. More details on what's happened these past two years are definitely upcoming._

_And this week, I really do need the feedback! It's finals week, and my poor brain is going to shrivel up and die. I actually gave myself a stress-nosebleed yesterday. I didn't even know I could do that! A shoutout to my fellow University slaves who are all cramming in ridiculous last-minute hours in the library trying to keep that GPA healthy._


	9. Chapter 9: Sherwood Lioness

_A/N: Hey all! Winter break is almost upon us! (And the crowd goes wild!) This here is a bit of a filler chapter, but I thought you'd all like to see some lighthearted interaction after the heavy conversation of the last chapter, so I'm postponing the second half of their conversation in favor for a bit of fun. You even get to meet Leah (Kim's roomie) and bear witness to some of the awkward bits of sharing a space with someone in college! I really do hope that you all enjoy!_

_Thanks to _MisterMagic25, n255, Xeiros, Firelord515, farfrom7, Jaely, Magic Basher54986, Guest, Lhyaran, piecesofyourheart, zax850, gypsy069, Jay Shields, Kigolicious, Ponks _(Didn't I tell you it would be soon?)_, Jim89, only-looking _(You leave such wonderful reviews, just so you know.), and _Guest. _All of the support really helped me to get through finals week, so this chapter is dedicated to everyone named above. You're all wonderful. So please, read on!_

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><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Nine<br>Sherwood Lioness

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><p>"Katherine Antigone Phillips!"<p>

This was shouted directly into Kim's ear, startling her into the waking world rather unpleasantly. On reflex, her fist shot out in a wicked uppercut, but the person who'd woken her knew better than to fall victim to the move, much to Kim's secret annoyance. Disoriented, she fell from her bed on the couch and onto the floor with a distinct and healthy _thud_.

"Leah! What the fuck?" Kim demanded after taking a moment to register her position. Her roommate stood over her sleep-rumpled form, scowling blackly. She too looked to have just woken up, dressed in only a sports bra and a pair of polka-dotted pajama pants, her silky blonde hair puffy and mussed.

Leah -a rather petite blonde with large brown eyes and the attitude of a true redhead- jabbed a finger at her accusingly. "Don't you 'What the fuck?' _me_, Katherine Antigone," she hissed. "What's our roommate rule number four?"

Kim blinked sleepily. "'If you're fucking someone in the apartment, leave one of the blue sticky-notes on the front door.' I _know_," she recited with an immediacy and piousness born of endless repetition. "I learned my lesson last time. That was a month ago! Why are you yelling at me? When did you even get back?"

At this point, Kim made an effort to sit up, and gratefully accepted Leah's offered hand to haul herself to her feet, despite the fact that the blonde was still scowling blackly at her. "I got back about one thirty and went straight to my bedroom," she snapped irritably. "Why didn't you put the sticky up, Kat?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because I didn't get laid?" Kim sneered back.

"There's a strange half-naked woman in my kitchen, Katherine!" Leah shrieked. "You _know_ it freaks me out when your flings show up randomly around the apartment! And this one was smirking. Smirking! Where was my blue post-it?"

Groaning, Kim ran an exasperated hand down her face. It was _way_ too early in the morning for this kind of shit. It was _just_ like Shego to start the day by being the cause of Kim's misery. "Look Leah," she sighed. "It's not what you think. Just calm your tits, let me get some coffee, and then I'll give you the sparknotes version, okay?" She didn't wait for her cranky roommate to agree before turning on heel and shambling into the kitchen, unable to function much beyond basic conversation without her morning shots of espresso.

Sure enough, Shego was lounging in Kim's usual chair at the table, dressed only in a blue plaid flannel shirt that she'd apparently stolen from Kim's closet (despite the fact that she'd had her own suitcase in the trunk of her car) and looking completely comfortable, not to mention rather smug. Kim took a brief moment to appreciate the sight of the woman's perfectly formed bare legs –because it _was_ hot—before shooting Shego a dark look. It was meant to convey her opinion that Shego looked _far_ too pleased with herself, though Shego seemed not to see it. She then summarily turned her attention to the coffee machine.

"Lover's quarrel, pumpkin?" Shego cooed, completely ignoring Kim's glowering and dragging a playful fingertip around the rim of her coffee mug.

_Kim's_ coffee mug. It literally had her –well, Kat's—name on it.

"Bite me," Kim muttered, rummaging in a cabinet for the spare and running her hands through her hair agitatedly once she found it. It was chipped, but it'd have to do. The action didn't help her appearance, however. She'd showered before she'd gone to sleep, and slept on her hair while it was wet. If it was possible, her red and blue striped mop had taken the opportunity to grow even wilder than it had been previously, sticking out in odd directions and curling in strange places. Her brain still hadn't connected fully with her body either, and what with the large t-shirt she'd gone to bed in falling sloppily off one shoulder after her general aura of disarray after her up-close and personal encounter with the floor, she both looked and felt a little pathetic.

Shego -clearly more of a morning person than Kim was- just widened her smile, and Kim admitted to herself that the woman was possibly a diagnosable sadist. "Oh, _not_ so nice in the mornings, are we?" the brunette tsked disapprovingly.

Kim flipped her off.

Laughing quite genuinely, Shego just shook her head and turned her attention to Leah, who was still glaring hatefully at the back of Kim's head. "I don't believe I had a chance to introduce myself earlier before you ran off to make Princess's morning just a little brighter," she said, surprising Kim a little with how pleasant her tone was. "I'm Mary Gordon."

"Leah Casey," Kim's roommate returned politely. "I'm sorry that you're going to have to watch Kat slowly asphyxiate to death on the blue post-it notes that I'm about to shove down her windpipe."

Growling in frustration, Kim took a long drag of her coffee, wincing as it scalded her tongue, before turning back around and facing the other two women. "Cool it, Leah," she instructed her roommate sternly. "No sex, no need for post-its. All right?"

Leah rolled her eyes. "Pull the other one, Kitty. You have a thing for her type. Unlike the men you drag through here, the women have a little consistency. Though the complexion's new," she added thoughtfully, and rather unnecessarily. There weren't too many green-skinned women running around the planet, after all.

Kim cringed inwardly as Shego returned her attention onto her, one sculpted eyebrow arched. "Been busy, Princess?"

"I had quite a few years of sexual repression to make up for, all right?" Kim squeaked, blushing furiously in her mortification. Sure, she was definitely a fan of the more carnal pleasures, but it wasn't as bad as Leah made it out to be. She didn't just sleep around for the heck of it. And why oh _why_ did she have to point out that Kim had a thing for athletic women with long, dark hair? Shego was _never_ going to let that go.

This was so the drama.

"Wait, so you _didn't_ sleep with Kat? For serious?" Leah asked Shego, obviously confused.

"No, not this time, honey," Shego confirmed, her bright green eyes glittering in amusement.

The blonde whirled back on Kim. "Kitty! What have I told you about picking up straight girls? It's not nice to make them question their sexuality!"

At the moment, Kim idly wondered if she'd be lucky enough for the ground to open up beneath her and swallow her whole. She was blushing so hard now that it felt like her skin was on fire.

Shego, for her part, burst into paroxysms of laughter so great that tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes. "Oh my God, Princess. Tell me you didn't!" she hooted.

"It was _one_ time, okay?" Kim whined. "I didn't know she was _that_ drunk, and it's not like she was objecting, or didn't enjoy herself immensely!"

"Sounds like_ that_ was the problem," Shego shot back, still gasping a little. "You got her off more times than her boyfriend ever did, didn't you?"

"Of course I did," Kim huffed in an effort to save face. "I can do anything, remember?"

That just set Shego off again. She nearly fell off her chair.

"Look Leah," Kim finally sighed, doing her best to ignore Shego's laughter and curling her fingers around her mug in an effort to absorb the warmth it radiated and frowning at her roommate. "Mary's an old friend of mine who stopped by for an unexpected visit last night. It got a little late, so I let her sleep in my room while I took the couch. No blue stickies unless the clothes come off, remember? Besides," she threw in with an evil grin. "_I'm_ not the one who has sex on the living room floor."

Now it was Leah's turn to blush. "That was _one_ time!" she wailed in an uncanny imitation of Kim's earlier statement, blinking sad blue eyes at her. "And I've walked in on you, too!"

"And I was in my bedroom at the time," Kim retorted, sticking out her tongue. "You know, that place where _most_ people go when they bring men home from the bar? If I recall correctly, that little _not-knocking_ incident was the whole reason we came up with rule number four in the first place. No need to bitch at _me_."

To her credit, Leah did appear slightly sheepish at the reminder.

"I'm still mad at you for that, you know," Kim continued to goad her, smirking from behind the rim of her cup and giving out a dreamy sigh. "You wouldn't believe what Anthony could do with his—"

"Ahbuhbuhbuh!" Shego suddenly shouted, halting Kim mid-sentence and scowling at the redhead. "That is _way_ too much information," she said firmly.

Kim just snickered at her.

Still scowling, the older woman threw a cherry flavored pop-tart at her with slightly more force than necessary. Kim only just managed to catch it. "You," Shego said, pointing a finger at Kim. "Eat your breakfast and get dressed. You owe me a spar and lunch. You." This time, she pointed at Leah. "Do whatever you do in your spare time."

Obligingly, Kim took the pastry between her teeth and snapped a military salute to her old nemesis. Leah just muttered something about needing a shower and vanished into her bedroom. Kim just shook her head. She loved Leah. Really, she did. The girl was dangerously high strung though.

Once she'd left, Shego turned to Kim with mischief dancing in her eyes, but Kim cut her off before she could say anything. "Oh, no," Kim snapped. "Not _one_ word from you! I'm a big girl now and I can do whatever and whoever I want to in the bedroom."

"Please. Would I _ever_ openly mock you about you and your roommate's obvious intimacy issues?" Shego asked with exaggerated innocence, batting her eyelashes.

Kim lifted an eyebrow and looked at her pointedly. "Yes, you would," she noted drily. "Anything else you need to get out of your system?"

"Of course, thanks for asking," Shego responded cheekily. "I've been waiting for this one, actually. Of all the middle names that exist, you chose Antigone? Really?"

Kim blushed deeply. She was doing far too much of that this morning. "It's poetic!" she insisted in defense of her choice of middle name.

"Ah yes, Antigone!" Shego exclaimed dramatically in an announcer-like voice, pretending to swoon. "One of the first true female heroes, from the Greek Theban sagas! She, who defied the decree of her uncle the king in order to bury her traitor brother and save his eternal soul, choosing morality over law." In an instant, Shego snapped back to her casually bored mannerisms. "You _do_ know she dies in the end after rotting in jail, don't you cupcake? Followed by the deaths of her fiancée and aunt?"

Kim took another bite of her pop-tart. She was reluctantly impressed that Shego was apparently so well versed in Greek saga, not that she'd ever admit to it. "Yes," she sighed. "But that's not the important part of the story!"

"Oh? Are you more interested in the fact that she was conceived when Oedipus and his mom got it on? Is there something you want to tell me about your parents, Kimmie?"

Kim blinked at Shego, debating throwing the last of her pop-tart at her, but decided against it in the end. Instead, she simply announced that it was _way _too early in the morning for Kim to deal with her sass, and proceeded to retreat back into her bedroom to get dressed.

With Shego, it was sometimes best just to pick your battles.

Thirty minutes later found both women exiting the apartment building and walking out into the parking lot. Kim had dressed warmly, but she still shivered as she was struck by the wall of cold November air and glanced jealously at Shego, who hadn't dressed warmly at all and seemed to be unaffected by the chill.

It was ferociously unfair.

"We're taking my car," Shego said suddenly, seizing upon Kim's elbow and dragging her off course. "I'm not riding in your piece of shit Civic."

Kim shrugged and followed without kicking up a fuss, even though she sort of wanted to- just to be an ass. Unfortunately for her, her car _was_ a piece of shit, making Shego's point valid. "Is it as sexy as the convertible you had last time?" she asked instead.

Shego just smirked at her. "It's better," she promised before stopping in front of a flashy red Corvette and making a sweeping gesture with one hand as Kim's eyes widened.

It took a heartbeat or two for Kim to put her metaphorical tongue back into her mouth, but once she had, she broke out into a blinding smile. "Spankin!" she cheered, doing an excited little hop, forgetting about the cold for the moment.

"It's a wonder how no one's realized who you are in all this time, Cupcake," Shego muttered just loudly enough that Kim was able to catch the words, earning herself a halfhearted glare. Noticing this, the brunette gave her a little shove towards the front of the car. "What are you standing there looking stupid for? Get in!"

Kim wasn't about to argue. The car was legitimately a thing of beauty –inside and outside—and she wasn't about to risk Shego driving off without her. Once she'd settled herself, the older woman turned and gave her a toe-curlingly wicked smile. "Ready, Kimmie?"

Kim winked. "Do your worst," she challenged.

The drive that followed was probably the most exciting thing to happen to Kim in months. It was a small miracle that they hadn't instigated a full-scale car chase with the highway patrol, given all the traffic laws that had been violated within the span of ten minutes. By the time Shego whipped dangerously into the parking lot outside the dojo Kim preferred to frequent, she thought that there was a strong possibility that she might actually explode from the joy and thrill that had built up inside of her. Shego drove her little red sports car much like James Bond drove his tricked-out Aston Martin, and though it wasn't exactly a safe experience for anyone involved, the pair of them were grinning like loons long after the engine shut off.

It was amazing, Kim mused, how easy it was for them to have fun together doing the simplest of things when they weren't trying to hit each other.

"Kitty-Kat!" a short man dressed in a black gi, straightening from his pose, called out to her as Kim pushed through the front door of the building. Shego walked in on her heels, casting an appraising eye over the facility. "Cutting your Thursday morning philosophy class again? Naughty of you!"

Kim waved her hand airily at dark-haired man who stepped across the mat in her direction, smiling cheerfully. "Come on, Mark. Know your Pereboom!" she teased, doing her best impression of her haughty professor. "I'm merely choosing to adopt a determinist viewpoint and accepting the fact that my free will doesn't actually exist. Hence, it's perfectly correct to say that _I'm_ not cutting the class. The universe is _making_ me do it."

Mark just shook his head at the redhead, who was inspecting her fingernails with an air of self-satisfaction. He then noticed the other woman standing strongly at Kim's side with an air of passivity. "Who's your friend, Kitty?"

"She's the person you'll be worshipping by noon," Kim said casually, already walking towards the back of the dojo where the lockers and showers were situated. Shego followed without comment, as Kim had promised to let her borrow the spare outfit she kept in her locker.

"Worshipping?" Shego questioned once they'd entered the area set aside for women and lounging herself across the wooden bench in between the lockers and showers as Kim fiddled with the lock on the locker she'd claimed as her own. "I mean, I'll give you I'm fabulous, but isn't that a _little_ much?"

Kim snorted inelegantly, but didn't turn around. "Undefeated," she replied matter-of-factly, poking herself in the sternum. "Not one person here has ever come close to beating me, and I've not exactly been _nice_ when putting spar partners down. It's lead to a bit of passive-aggressive frustration. You'll be the Robin Hood to my Sheriff of Nottingham once we're done here."

Sitting up straight, Shego snatched the gi out of the air that Kim tossed in her general direction, looking unbearably smug. "What can I say? Green is my color."

"Just shut up and get dressed."

"As the Princess commands."

The pair of them summarily faced away from each other and slipped out of their clothes before pulling on the significantly looser sparring outfits. Fortunately for Shego, she and Kim were close enough in size that hers fit reasonably well on her. She hummed in approval and strode from the room and back onto the main floor of the studio, Kim following closely. It was a fairly large sparring area, which was the reason Kim preferred this dojo over others in the neighborhood. Her style of combat was largely dependent on acrobatic maneuvers that simply allowed her to be where her opponent's strikes were not, and a more open space allowed her to get more creative. Normally, six to eight people would be spaced out over the red mat that covered the floor and protected the practitioners of the martial arts from injury, but it seemed that Kim's comment about Shego to Mark had aroused the curiosity of those who had been sparring when they'd entered.

They'd cleared the floor. Like Hell they were going to miss what promised to be a clash of Titans, if Kim wasn't exaggerating.

Seeing the sparring area ready and waiting for them sent Kim's pulse skyrocketing in anticipation, and she possessed a distinct bounce in her gait as she and Shego made their way to the center of the floor before they stopped and faced each other, disregarding any warm-ups or stretching by a silent, mutual agreement. When Kim looked into Shego's bright eyes, they held a spark that made her shiver. Memories of hundreds of fights nudged at her mind, and she dropped into her well-worn defensive stance with a fluidity that spoke of how comfortable she was with both the action and situation.

This, Kim decided in that moment, was how she and Shego were meant to interact. Talking was all well and good, but nothing would ever compare to the physical action that they were about to indulge in. Even after two years going without, her blood still sang with anticipation for the coming moments.

Shego, it seemed, agreed. She rolled her head loosely on her shoulders and smiled languidly at her before dropping into her own ready stance. "You know, Princess," she said as they began to circle each other, bare feet making next to no noise as they moved. "I'll confess that I had some serious unresolved issues with you when I came to see you, and we _could_ have sat down and talked them all away; but you have to admit that _this_ is the fun way to work things out."

"Ah-ah-ah," Kim crooned, crinkling her nose slightly. "You're going to have to work harder than mere _fun_ to beat me, _Mary_. Do you think you can handle it?"

Shego sneered at her and tossed her mane of beautiful waist-length tresses out of her face. "Your ass is mine, _Katherine_," she shot back, tone sugary-sweet in the dangerous sort of way.

"Talk dirty to me," Kim purred in response before leaping across the space separating them with her fists poised to strike.

And just like that, the fight had begun.

Though each woman fought similarly in that their styles were mish-mashes of various fighting styles cobbled together to form unique and deadly sets of movement, both had distinct 'flavors' to their styles that set them apart. Despite the fact that Shego wasn't able to use her plasma powers at the moment due to a desire to remain as incognito as a green-skinned human could possibly be, her fighting style was catered to take advantage of her deadly hands. She fought like a lioness, striking quickly and aggressively to make full use of her extraordinary strength and dexterity to take her enemy down hard and fast. Kim's strengths, on the other hand, lay with her superior speed and stamina. She fought like a snake, staying well out of reach of her opponent before striking quickly and pulling back just as fast. She had an uncanny knack for slithering away from any counterattacks with enough skill to avoid taking many hits, which she could not withstand as well as Shego, who only let any pain she experienced fuel her ferocity.

They were a good match for each other, and much to Kim's delight as she made the discovery, they could still push each other to their very limits just as well as they could (if not better than) before their hiatus. They fell into their established rhythm of fighting almost immediately as if they were performing a particularly violent dance. She laughed breathlessly even as she was slammed fiercely into the ground by her opponent and delivered a fierce kick to her stomach in response. Shego landed on her back and redirected her momentum to flip herself back into her feet in the same motion, charging before Kim could blink. They met in a flurry of punches and kicks, and Kim had never felt lighter.

It was wild. It was regretful. It was painful. It was angry. It was joyful. It was sad. It was everything that they could never quite articulate to each other aloud, and never needed to.

Kim honestly wasn't sure how she'd survived without this since before the Lorwardian invasion.

In the end, it was Kim who was the winner of their spar. Shego was at a disadvantage without her plasma glow, and Kim had the better stamina between the two of them. They'd been fighting for a little over an hour straight, and by the time she pinned the older woman on her stomach, twisting her arms behind her and straddling her back, they were both breathing raggedly, sweating, and trembling.

"I win," Kim whispered hoarsely, leaning forward to speak in Shego's ear, who was still pinned below her.

Frustrated, Shego squirmed a little in Kim's hold, but soon relaxed beneath her and exhaled somewhat forcefully. "Fine," she growled.

Relieved, Kim immediately allowed her body to go limp and rolled off of the brunette so that she lay exhaustedly on her back just next to her. "Oh. My. God," she panted. "I thought I was going to _die_."

Shego snorted, and Kim lolled her head to one side so that they were facing each other. The loser of their little battle had her face pressed into the cool plastic covering of the mat and her eyes closed. "I've gone soft without you to annoy me, Princess," she complained softly. "I feel like a green bruise with two legs."

"Ditto," Kim said, and then hesitated. "Well, except for the green part," she amended, eyeing her red-flushed skin before grinning and giggling to herself. "That was _amazing_!"

Shego opened her eyes and winked. "Better than sex," she agreed, chuckling lightly. She sat up then, and helped Kim to her feet, who gratefully accepted. They both jumped slightly, however, when raucous applause suddenly erupted from around them as their audience picked their jaws up from the floor and recognized that the fight was over.

Kim gave Shego, who was blushing slightly, a sheepish glance. "See?" she pointed out. "Worshipping."

It took a moment for Shego to recover her original color, but once she did, Kim found herself the recipient of a smile so radiant and genuine that she stopped breathing for a moment, stunned by how beautiful her ex-nemesis was in that moment.

"Spankin," Shego said, with no small amount of wicked humor.

Kim blinked, stunned, then simply threw her head back and laughed.

* * *

><p><em>AN: A cheerful chapter from a cheerful authoress! Don't worry though, drama-lovers. Next chapter will have all the angst that you've been missing and more details on the main problem that our heroines will be facing. (And just as a side note, the blue stickie note thing is something that the girls living next door to me started doing because they kept walking in on each other. It was just too funny not to include!) Until next time, darlings!_


	10. Chapter 10: Human

_A/N: Some of you have been pretty loudly concerned about a few things in this story, so in answer, I have composed a list of things that Kim is NOT:  
>1. "An OC": Let's be honest. Kim Possible from the show was a rather two-dimensional character designed to appeal to teenagers. Her behavior and personality as portrayed in the show is that of a teenager. <em>This_ Kim is no longer a teenager, and therefore doesn't act like one. It doesn't mean she's an OC. Yes, she's different, but I've gone to great lengths to pull a believable 'grown-up' reality out of what was provided. Kim is still Kim, and her overarching personality traits remain the same. If you want teenager 'in-character' Kim, don't read a story in which she's an adult.  
>2. "A whore": Okay. So I understand that I made mention last chapter that Kim had slept with multiple partners of both genders. This is true. But the conversation really made it sound like it happened more often than it did. It's called teasing. It often involves this thing called hyperbole. You know, like if your buddy really likes hamburgers, and you tell everyone that he 'eats hamburgers for every meal' but he doesn't <em>actually_ eat hamburgers for every meal. Please note that Kim _did_ mention that Leah was exaggerating. For her age and in her climate, I gave Kim a perfectly average sex life that occurred over a span of two years. If that offends you, you're free to disagree with her choices, but I firmly believe in adults being allowed to explore their own sexuality as they please and I'll portray that in whichever way I choose.  
>3. "A faggot": I deleted the comment that said this, and I'll delete any comment that says anything like it ever again. Next time you want to be hateful, grow a pair and don't use the anonymous review. And for Christ's sake, DON'T read something that is clearly labeled as femmeslash if it's a problem for you!<em>

_As for everyone else, I hope you had some lovely holidays. My brother bought me the Emma Frost Ultimate Collection comic book, which I've been coveting for months, so my winter break is off to a great start!_

_Thanks to _MisterMagic25, Ponks, doodles, Magic Basher54986, no name, only-looking, zax850, gyspy069, jim89, _and _Lhyaran.

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><p>Dear Diary: Chapter Ten<br>Human

* * *

><p>After their spar, Shego and Kim chose not to linger at the dojo. They showered and re-dressed in record time, before walking across the street and entering a smallish diner simply called 'Mama Renley's'. It was no five-star sit-down, but Kim had a weakness for their classic hamburgers and divine peach cobblers, and was as such a familiar sight in the establishment. Shego didn't seem all that thrilled to be there, but she didn't say anything. Kim chose to interpret this as tacit approval rather than a result of Shego's exhaustion, and ordered her artery-clogging meal with her usual cheerfulness despite her companion's much more subdued attitude.<p>

After their exertions, the pair was simply ravenous. They didn't speak to each other at all until they'd finished the better portion of their food and their pace slowed. Kim felt infinitely better after refueling, and decided to start up the promised conversation as she licked leftover peach filling from her fork, which she'd been scraping off her plate.

"So what brings you to Chicago, Shego?" she asked, falsely blue eyes lit with genuine curiosity. She wasn't really worried about being overheard addressing 'Mary' as Shego. They were tucked away in the back corner of the diner, in a booth that offered them some semblance of privacy. It wasn't very crowded yet, and so long as they kept their voices low, Kim knew from experience that their words would be easily lost against the background radio playing classic rock. Not that anyone trying to find the ex-villain would think she'd be caught dead in a place like this anyways.

Shego shook herself from the slight food-coma she'd apparently fallen into, eyes snapping from the french-fry she'd been in the process of dipping into her strawberry milkshake and focusing on Kim's face. "Ki—" Shego cut herself off before she could really start, frowning. "Do you… prefer Kim, or Katherine?" came the unexpected query.

Kim tilted her head to one side and considered the woman seated in front of her. Shego was behaving strangely. She looked… uncertain. Since when did _Shego_ care what name Kim preferred? For as long as they'd known each other, Shego had always just called her whatever the hell she wanted to, and Kim couldn't quite touch upon what was different here.

It took quite a bit of effort for Kim to resist smacking herself for that thought. What was different here? Only _everything_! No big.

And everything _was_ different. Kim was suddenly struck by why Shego had seemed so off-balance for nearly their entire reunion. In their own ways, they each knew each other better than anyone else on the planet, and yet in all of their interactions, they had never even _approached_ an attitude friendlier than the level of 'temporary cease-fire'. Well, outside of mind-altering mad science, that is. But now, they were being somewhat nice to each other _without_ the added incentive of a powerful mutual enemy. For them, it was completely foreign ground. Kim imagined that this went for Shego more so than herself. Kim had had plenty of time to come to terms with the idea of not being enemies, but she had a feeling that, to Shego, the concept was very new, and the woman was exploring it like she would a sixth toe that had spontaneously sprouted out of her foot. Now that Kim understood this, she felt considerably more charitable towards Shego. The super-powered woman _never_ did anything that didn't somehow benefit her in some way, and yet now that Kim was 'retired', she wasn't really useful to the woman at all.

But Shego was _still here_, sitting with her in Mama Renley's Diner and asking her what name she preferred. Kim knew that Shego wasn't really one to make friends, given the harshness of her life and previous poor experiences… _but_ _Shego was still here_. And she was, in her own way, making a legitimate effort to be pleasant.

It was rather adorable.

Almost against her will, Kim felt her entire body relax as a tension she hadn't quite been aware of melted from her shoulders. "Honestly?" she started with a sheepish smile. "If you were anyone else, I would tell you to pick one or the other. Coming from you, though, it… doesn't really matter what you call me. You can even call me a sentimental idiot for thinking that it would almost be strange to answer to anything other than _Pumpkin_, _Princess_, or _Cupcake_," she confessed.

It was a testament to the strangeness of their relationship that after this allowance, Shego too seemed to relax immeasurably in her seat, slouching against the red plastic covering of the booth. "Thanks, Kimmie," she said casually, not needing to elaborate. "To answer your question though… it's a bit of a long story," Shego continued, frowning at the pink-frosted fry she had yet to eat as if she wanted it to spontaneously burst into flames.

Though with Shego, that _was_ a legitimate hazard.

"I… haven't thanked you yet, for getting the cops off my back," the woman continued, popping the french-fry into her mouth (which was now sans her signature black lipstick for a change) and staring earnestly at her younger tablemate. "I don't know how you did it, and… I don't really know why you did. Because you didn't have to. But it worked like a charm, and for a while there, I could walk through a strip mall in my cat suit in broad daylight and be _fine_. It was… it was really nice. I enjoyed it a lot until the RACMA project kicked in and I started to have to lay low again."

Kim blinked, her mind scrambling slightly for a reference. "RACMA project? What's that?"

Shego just stared at her like she was stupid. "Damn, Princess, you _are_ out of touch!" she exclaimed. "When was the last time you talked to Nerdlinger?"

"Last week. It was his birthday. Why?" It went without saying that Kim was getting a _very_ bad feeling about this sitch. She shifted nervously.

For a few long moments, Shego just gazed at her with a thoughtful expression that bordered on wondering. "You… you have some very loyal friends, Kimmie. Stupid, but loyal," she finally said. "Wade should really know by now that keeping someone in the dark is no way to protect them." She wrung her hands in a nervous gesture that Kim hadn't seen since the days of Miss Go. "The RACMA project… came into being just shy of a year after your disappearance. You know that the media didn't take your loss well…"

Kim cringed at the memory of the weeks-long drama that the news had created with their 'search for the world's missing heroine'. Her face had been plastered all over the news channels and newspapers for far too long for comfort. She'd been a nervous wreck, worried that someone would get a clue and realize that Kat Phillips was really Kim Possible despite her disguise. Thankfully, after the weeks passed and no new evidence was ever found, the media hype faded away until she was merely a shadow in the fickle memory of the tabloid readers.

"Well, the Earth's defenses were completely useless against the Lorwardians, as you probably remember," Shego went on. "That really freaked out the powers-that-be. They looked at _our_ success, though, and realized that if it came to a fight against a race with hopelessly superior technology, that their best bet was a team of agents that could do what a nuke couldn't. Except the average-Joe GJ agents were pretty much useless, unlike, say, you and I and our matching pair of buffoons."

Shego smirked when Kim glared at her for that.

"But the four of us… aren't normal humans. I've got the comet juice, Stoppable's got the monkey mojo, Drakken has his questionable intelligence, and you're _you_." Shego shrugged helplessly and popped another french-fry. "I don't know who first came up with the idea, but some high-up bureaucrat was probably trying to console himself over the miserable failures of his own operatives or some such rot. It makes you feel better about your own shortcomings if you measure up against people like us and decide that we aren't really in the same league, or even comparable, you know? Apples and oranges. Or... apples and weapons-grade plutonium, in my case. Like how baseball players are tossed out on their asses if they're on steroids, and their records don't count in an official capacity."

"They came up with the idea of metahumans. People who are just… _more_. And once that idea was born, they then realized that absolutely none of the metahumans worked for _them. _So just like that, people like us were branded a danger to society, and the feds weren't about to lose track of any of us like they did with you. The RACMA Project is only known in certain circles, but it's scarily '1984'. It stands for Regulation and Control of Metahuman Anomalies."

Kim gasped, suddenly understanding where this was going.

With a bitter smile, Shego jabbed a thumb at her own chest. "You know me, Cupcake. Like _hell_ I was going to register with the government and submit to monitoring like some World War Two Jewish kid with a yellow star. I'm _no one's_ stooge." She shook her head. "Needless to say, it's not something that's really very enforceable. Human rights violations don't go down well with the public usually. But it _has_ forced anyone with special 'talents' to go off the grid, for the most part, unless they're willing to submit to being under the watchful eye of Big Brother. Let me tell you, GJ is having a _great_ year for recruitment. You get special freedoms that other registered metahumans don't if you're on their payroll, apparently. Or, so my brothers tell me."

Eyes blown wide with the shock of such a revelation, Kim sat rigidly in her seat as if she had been slapped, scrambling to put two words together in her head in something that resembled English. "I never…" she stuttered. "Wade?"

"Your nerd is good. _Really_ good," Shego admitted. "He was gone before the rest of us even knew what was happening. He covered your tracks, and Stoppable's, and anyone else who contacted him for help, really. I even heard that Camille Leon of all people asked him for a new identity that had access to all her old funds, and no one's seen hide or hair of her, or her money, since. Impressive, considering her astounding lack of subtlety. I'm in Chicago because an acquaintance of mine who used to live here asked Wade for help as well, and sent me after a few things he left in his house so I can put them in storage for him."

"I… I can't believe that Wade never told me!" Kim suddenly exploded in a heated whisper, still very much aware of the public setting even as she angrily clenched her fists on the tabletop. "Ron, too! And the tweebs…"

Clamping down on Kim's wrist with her own warm hand, Shego cut her off with a sharp glare. "And what would you have done about it, if you knew?" she demanded in a hiss, emerald eyes dark with anger. "Painted a picture about how _sad_ it made you feel?" Kim recoiled as if Shego had slapped her, but the other woman paid her no heed and simply plowed onwards. "You retired, Kimmie. You got out clean. No strings attached. In our business, the only other happy ending you could have wished for was a relatively painless death. Do you _know_ how much money a lot of people would –and do—pay to escape like you did? Do you _understand _that your happiness isn't something that a good friend would just let you _throw away_ by doing something stupid?"

"You said yourself that keeping someone in the dark is no way to protect them!" Kim snarled back, leaning over the table to get into Shego's face. She took umbrage to the implication that she was useless in this fight –or worse, a coward who hid from it behind her pencils and sketchbooks. Kim was many things, but a coward wasn't one of them. Nor was she incompetent.

True to form, Shego didn't back down from the challenge and leaned forward as well until they were sneering directly into each other's faces, noses almost touching. "It's not, but _you're_ the stubborn exception, Kim. All those people who love you: they _knew_ you would react like a hothead. You would do the same thing for them and you _know _it, so _don't_ pull this shit with me."

And frankly, Kim didn't have anything to say to that. Because Shego was right.

Growling softly in frustration, Kim searched Shego's steely eyes for a few heartbeats before she slowly sat back into the booth and glared hatefully at the floral-papered wall, admitting defeat. Though her fists were still balled on the tabletop and her left hand still trapped by Shego's restraining grip, she forced the rest of her body to relax and resisted the urge to yank her wrist free from Shego's grasp. Losing her cool wouldn't be at _all_ helpful, she scolded herself sternly. Damn her temper.

After a rather lengthy interlude of silence, the punishing grip Shego maintained on her left wrist slowly loosened into a more soothing one. "I'm sorry, Kim," the woman sighed.

"Don't be," Kim instructed, closing her eyes. "I needed that. It's just… just…"

"I know," Shego said.

"My brothers are considered 'metahuman' now, aren't they?" Kim sighed, eyes still closed. She didn't want to see Shego's face right now.

"Class One," came the confirmation. "So are you, you know. Nerdlinger's a Class Two. My brothers and I are Class Three."

Kim chuckled weakly. "Class?" she asked, not sure if she really wanted to know.

Shego hummed an acknowledgement. "Class One is a minor mental or physical 'abnormality'. Class two is a major mental or physical abnormality. Class Three is any combination therein. But Kim, it… it's not really that big of a deal. Most people who are a little more than human ended up on the wrong side of the law anyways, and we're used to keeping ourselves out of trouble. Hardly anyone is actually affected by the project, as cold as that sounds. Honestly, I forget about RACMA all the time."

Finally opening her eyes, Kim just shook her head at the obviously false attempt at placating her. "And our brothers, Shego?" she pointed out. "Can _they_ forget?"

Shego's grip on her wrist tightened seemingly unconsciously, and she looked away from her. It was her turn to avoid Kim's expression. "No," came the whispered answer.

In that moment, Kim noticed sadly, Shego sounded almost… defeated. Kim released a shaky breath and shook her head. The entire conversation made her think back to reading Shego's diary, of all things. More specifically, to the entry that outlined Shego's theory of the world's division into the 'haves' and 'have-nots'. Kim, Shego, the tweebs, Wade… they all had something that normal people didn't. Be it comet powers, incredible intelligence, or simply the ability to do anything, they were special; and that would never sit well with some people. It was human nature, really. It made her think of a quote from Voltaire. _History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes going up._

A rather morbid way to look at things, considering that Voltaire was French and France's rather colorful history regarding revolutions, but it was practical regardless. Kim understood very well in her adulthood that the words 'good' and 'evil' didn't mean anything, and that morality was something that was decided by those in power. She didn't have to like it, but it wasn't fair of her to lash out at Shego for no reason other than to vent her own frustrations. In the past, this was acceptable (and admittedly frequent) behavior, but as she'd already established, _everything_ was different now.

"Shego," Kim said, her expression morphing into something rather self-deprecating once she'd regained her companion's attention again. "You asked me earlier what name I preferred, and I suppose I should return the favor. What name do _you_ want me to call you?"

Said villain seemed shocked at the question, but her features soon betrayed her comprehension of the message Kim was trying to send. All at once, the redhead was apologizing for her behavior, acknowledging Shego's earlier olive branch, and offering her own in return. Kim had never been so appreciative of the fact that they could communicate so effectively and without many words, and judging from the softening of her expression, Kim supposed that Shego felt the same.

"I… you can call me anything you want, Princess," the woman finally answered, blinking rapidly. "Only you."

Kim smiled so widely that it almost hurt. "I'm really glad you came, Michelle," she said in her customarily blunt manner.

Tentatively, Shego returned the gesture. "Me too, Pumpkin," she confessed. "Me too."

And just like that, the entire world righted itself again, and Kim felt _whole_. It was a good feeling. She practically glowed for the entire day. In fact, despite the fact that Shego left that afternoon, Kim was still on top of the world for days afterwards, much to poor Leah's complete chagrin.

But Kim didn't care how confused her roommate was, nor did she care that she didn't know when Shego would next find the time to drop by. Nothing could bring her mood down. Not even the rather stern talking-to she gave to Wade, Ron, and her brothers regarding keeping secrets. No, all that mattered to Kim was that Shego had promised to come back. As strange as it was… that thought was enough.

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><p><em>AN: So there you have a bit of what the rest of the world has been up to while Kim's been away! And now that we're all caught up with the times, the _real_ action can begin. I've already got the next chapter outlined... and let's just say it's a doozy. Once again, thank you for all of your encouragement! And have a happy New Year!_


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